Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids
by Francis456
Summary: Full summery inside. Femslash Crossover. Marina somehow survives and instead of dissolving into sea foam, is banished and exiled and is taken in by Prince Eric. Meanwhile, Ariel is a young mermaid much like Marina with a desire to see the human world, but trouble is afoot as the evil Sea Witch, Ursula seeks to take over the world's oceans.
1. Rejected by the Sea

**Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids**

**Rejected by the Sea**

**Disclaimer** – I do not own any of the characters from the Little Mermaid. The Walt Disney adaptation is the property of the Walt Disney Company, the anime adaptation is the property of Toei Animation and both adaptations are based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson.

* * *

**Summery** – At the end of the Little Mermaid anime adaptation Marina dissolved into sea foam with a heartbroken Fritz chasing after her, but what if Marina did not dissolve into sea foam? After Marina jumped from Prince Fjord's ship, for some reason she does not dissolve into sea foam and Fritz managed to save her before she drowned. However, her father, grandmother and sisters meet up with her and since she's become human, Marina is effectively banished from her father's undersea kingdom's territorial waters along with Fritz, who's charged with looking out for her. Fortunately all is not lost for Marina since despite everything, her family still loves her and Marina ends up in the care of Prince Eric for which she's grateful, but is unable to come out of her own misery. Meanwhile, Ariel, the youngest mermaid princess of the neighbouring undersea kingdom of Atlantica has an urge for adventure and a desire to see the human world and soon, fate leads them both to meet one another as Ariel rescues Marina from drowning during a storm after she's blown overboard from the ship she was on and fuels the young mermaid's desire to become human, but all is not well as Ursula, the Atlantican Sea Witch seeks to take advantage of the situation in a nefarious plot to seize control of the world's oceans and so, as Ariel becomes human and seeks to win Marina's love, it's up to Fritz, Flounder, Sebastian, Scuttle and Marina's sisters to help out while trying to find a way to nullify Ursula's contract and Fritz comes to realise that their only hope in stopping Ursula may lie with the Sea Witch that helped Marina transform into a human and Marina resolves that regardless of the outcome that she will protect Ariel and should Ariel fail then she'll deal with Ursula herself. With so many factors and a three-day time limit, can Ariel and Marina fall in love and more importantly, can Ursula be stopped?

* * *

It was a rather grey and dull overcast day out in the middle of the North Sea as three seagulls flew through the clouds, and the sun shone down on the sea through gaps in the clouds as a pod of dolphins leapt out from the water as they swam on the surface. The pod, itself, was about three-strong, soon stopped and poked their heads above the surface as they started to converse as one of the seagulls that had been flying overhead landed on the water between them; not that they minded. In fact, they were quite okay with the bird's presence, but before the dolphins or the seagull could get too comfortable, a huge wooden ship suddenly broke through the layer of fog, causing the seagull to fly up into the air and the three dolphins all scattered and dived beneath the surface. However, as the ship passed by, the dolphins all poked their heads above the surface once again as they watched the ship go on its way.

"I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue, and it's hey to the starboard, heave ho," the ship's crew sang, as a few winced up a net full of fish from the water below, and others worked on the ship's masts, "Look out lad, a mermaid be waitin' for you, in mysterious fathoms below."

A sail raised up revealing a wooden carving of a mermaid that was situated at the very front of the ship, and on the deck behind the sail, Prince Eric, the prince of a small kingdom located in the country known as Denmark, had his hand on the rope that was attached to the sail's upper mast and he leaned against the banister in front of him.

"Isn't this great, the salty sea air?" he said before leaning back and closing his eyes briefly, "The wind blowing in your face?"

Beside him to his left, with his front paws up on the banister, was his English sheepdog and trusted companion, Max, who just barked in response to his master's question.

"Perfect day to be at sea?" Eric finished, as he turned to look at his number one manservant as well as his confidant, Grimsby, who was leaning over the side of the ship, green in the face from seasickness.

"Oh yes, oh delightful," Grimsby replied sarcastically, as he raised his head to glare at Eric before he hurriedly threw his head over the side of the ship once again as he felt another wave of vomit coming up from the depths of his stomach.

"A fine strong wind and a followin' sea," a crew member who was tending to a rope that lead up into the ship's rigging, and Eric went over to help him with his work, "King Triton must be in a friendly-type mood."

"King Triton?" Eric asked curiously, as he turned to regard the crewman.

"Why, ruler of the mer-people, lad," another crewman with his left eye closed and a dark brownish orange beard said, as he busily tended to the fish that had been caught in the net and was putting them into an open barrel as Eric turned his attention towards him, "Thought every good sailor knew about him."

"Mer-people," Grimsby, who had recovered from his seasickness, said, as he came up to where Eric was while fixing his hair and purple tie while Eric dropped to one knee and was seeing to Max, "Eric, pay no attention to this nautical nonsense."

"But it ain't nonsense, it's the truth," the crewman insisted, as he walked up to Grimsby with a fish in his hand and started waving it in Grimsby's face, and caused him to retreat as he advanced on him, "I'm tellin' you, down in the depths of the ocean they live… ooowww wo-wow!"

Unfortunately for the crewman, the fish he had in his hand was still alive and managed to wriggle itself free from his grasp due to its slippery scales, and it seemingly made a lunge for Grimsby before slapping him in the face a few times with its caudal fin, and managed to manoeuvre itself over the side of the ship, causing it to fall back into the sea.

"… Heave ho, mysterious fathoms below," the rest of the crew sang, as their song concluded.

"Oh darn, there goes one," the crewman said in dissatisfaction, as he glared at Grimsby, clearly blaming him for the fish's escape.

"Oh, it's just one fish, nothing to worry about," Grimsby replied in his defence, as he glared back at the disgruntled crewman, and then, he turned his attention back to his charge before the crewman had the chance to think up of a reply, "Like I said, Eric, pay no attention to this mythological folklore. It's nothing more than a load of nautical nonsense."

"But, Grim, remember what I told you how I…?" Eric started to say, as he suddenly trailed off, and turned to stare at a woman standing at the very back of the ship, as she silently stared out at the sea.

"Don't be ridiculous," Grimsby scoffed; shaking his head, as he also stared in the woman's direction, "Talking dolphins, and a mermaid that became human? Eric, I'm sure that it was nothing more than a hallucination brought on by the disorientation caused by the coldness of sea fog. Anyway, why did you bring Miss Marina anyway? Don't you know that it's bad luck to bring a woman aboard a vessel?"

"Now who's the one talking nonsense, eh, Grim?" Eric said with a smug smile, as he turned the tables on his confidant, "That's just a load of superstitious hogwash."

"Ah, touché," Grimsby replied, realising what Eric was doing, and knowing that he was right, but then, he cleared his throat as his expression became serious once again, "But seriously, why bring Miss Marina in the first place?"

"Well, Grim, ever since she started living with me, I've noticed that she doesn't really get out all that often," Eric replied with a rather somewhat sad sigh, as he started to pace round in circles, as he turned to look at Marina, and could not help but frown as he recalled her situation, "In fact, she doesn't venture all that far beyond the palace walls unless I'm with her. In short, Grimsby, I brought her along to get her out and about. I don't want her being cooped up in the palace all day."

"I see," Grimsby said with a sigh, as he had to admit that Eric did have a point.

Marina, herself, had long blonde hair that almost went down to the back of her knees with two strands running down her front over her chest. However, both Eric and Grimsby found themselves agreeing that her eyes were indeed strange. Her irises were a deep sparkling turquoise colour, and whenever the light shone on her pupils, instead of appearing to be black, they appeared to be a deep aqua blue colour. Anyway, Marina currently wore a light blue dress that covered her entire body and hid the fact that she was barefoot. She did not know why, but ever since she became human, she found herself taking a dislike to any kind of footwear and spent most of her time barefoot. Anyway, hanging from her neck was a white circular decoration that had no meaning whatsoever and was just purely for decoration, and it was tied in place by a string that looped round the back of her neck. However, in her hair, situated on the left side of her head near the top was a huge pink pearl hairpin that was surrounded by five white flower petals.

As both he and Grimsby continued to stare at Marina in wonder, Eric could not help but think back to when he and Marina first met, and in all honesty, he could easily say that he would not have believed it if he had not been there to see for himself. Like Grimsby had said, he could have easily dismissed it as a hallucination brought on by the disorientation that the cold air within sea fog could cause, if not for the fact that Marina, herself, existed. It had been six months ago since then…

* * *

**Six months previously**

Prince Eric was busy helping the ship's crewmen with their routine chores while the ship was currently sailing up between where the Atlantic Ocean met the English Channel while en route back to his kingdom in Denmark. He was on his way back from yet another failed marriage meeting to a princess of a kingdom located in the country known as Portugal, and like all the previous marriage meetings he had had in the past, it ended with him deciding that he would not marry the princess. It was not the princess, herself, he figured. After all, he had nothing against her as a person, but for him, he wanted to marry for love, not for political gain or to secure some beneficial political alliance. He wanted to marry a girl that he would fall in love with and who would love him back for who he was and not because he was a prince, and upon observing the princess, he could honestly say that she did not really love him, and that she honestly did not want to marry him, and only went along with it out of a sense of obligation towards her parents.

Eric was fortunate in that regard. Both his parents had passed away in the past, and so, he was left as ruler of the Kingdom, though, the law explicitly stated that he could not legally inherit the title of King until he got married. Anyway, Eric found himself rather glad that neither of his parents were around, otherwise he was sure that he would have been forced into a loveless marriage long ago; not that his parents had been forceful people; oh no, quite the contrary; Eric's parents were, in fact, really decent people before they died, and had both been kind and loving towards their son, and Eric remembered how his father had often taken him out to observe the commoners and see how they lived their lives so that he would not grow up to be spoiled and take everything he had for granted. No, Eric learned all about the various different commoner lifestyles and he knew the value of hard work. His parents had pretty much drilled those lessons into his mind before they died, and it was during one of those excursions that he found his passion for the sea, and despite being a prince, whenever he sailed, he often found himself helping the crew with their chores like now; he was busy using a rope to move a sail so that the wind would push the ship in the right direction, and he did this because he felt that as a passenger of the ship, then he felt that he had to do his bit and put his own weight, but in truth, he had chosen to help out due to pure boredom, and had found that he actually quite enjoyed working round the ships he sailed on.

Anyway, despite his parents being nice people, they were still the King and Queen of the Kingdom, and as such, being the rulers of a kingdom had its share of disadvantages, such as the responsibilities of dealing with foreign regions and maintaining ties between them. Eric was no fool. He knew the pressures of ruling a kingdom and he was aware of the pressure that he was under to settle down and find a queen. Of course, the rules of his kingdom in regards to the Royal Family were not dictated by arranged marriages or restricted to social classes, and so, Eric knew that he had the freedom to marry whomever he wanted regardless of their status, but he knew that most people were expecting him to marry a princess; probably to secure a political tie with another kingdom, and Eric knew that had his parents been alive, they would have probably pressured him to the point where he would agree to marry the next princess he met just to get them off his back. Of course, they wouldn't have forced him to marry, but the pressure to marry ASAP in order to preserve their familial line would have had them on his case constantly.

Luckily, though, Grimsby, who despite being his manservant had become somewhat of a pseudo guardian to him after his parents had died, respected his wishes enough that he mainly distanced himself from those marital affairs and only reminded Eric every now and then about the kingdom's desire to have him settle down, but fortunately he was not constantly on his back over it, since he knew that his charge was rather choosy and that he wanted to be sure that his wife would love him back for him being Eric the person and not Prince Eric. In short, Eric did not want a gold digger who only wanted to marry him for his status and he did not want to marry anyone who was only marrying him out of a sense of political obligation.

"Marina!" a voice that sounded like it belonged to a child came, sounding rather alarmed and Eric was brought out of his thoughts and back to reality, "Hey, you big oafish barbarians, keep your hands off her!"

"Oh my gosh!" a voice that Eric recognised as belonging to one of the crewmen, "What witchery is this? A talking dolphin!"

Eric looked down near the back of the ship and saw that near the back of the ship, caught in a fishing net was what appeared to be a blue dolphin calf glaring up at two of the crewmen who were tending to a woman with long blonde hair and wearing a light blue dress, and even from this distance, he could see that she looked to be in her mid-to-late teens. Even from up in the rigging, Eric noticed that the woman was struggling, obviously frightened and the dolphin calf was flopping around angrily as he attempted to reprimand the crewmen for hassling the woman.

"What the… who are they?" he thought to himself, though, he had to admit that he was really astounded that the dolphin could actually talk.

He had heard rumours from others about talking animals, but in the past had just dismissed them as old wives tales told by drunks or people who were delusional, but as Eric watched the scene, he could clearly hear the dolphin cursing at the crewmen as they appeared to be manhandling the blonde-haired woman, whom he could honestly say that he had never met before and was curious as to how she came to be on board the ship. Was she a stowaway? That did seem plausible, but then how would the dolphin know her and why would he be shouting at the crewmen.

Thinking quickly, he jumped down from the rigging and onto the deck, somehow managing to land on his feet without suffering any injury whatsoever, and then, he sprinted towards the woman and the dolphin calf.

"What the heck is going on here?" one of the crewmen, holding the woman from behind said as he fought to restrain her, "Easy, miss, we're not going to hurt you."

"Leave her alone!" the dolphin shouted, as it glared dangerously at the crewmen, "Just leave her alone, she's done nothing to you!"

"Silence, demon dolphin!" one crewmen stated, as he came into view wielding a harpoon, clearly intending to use it to kill the "demon dolphin", "I don't know what the story is, but you ain't gonna bewitch this little girl with your sorcery any longer!"

The woman's eyes widened in alarm upon seeing the harpoon, and her struggling suddenly intensified, catching the two crewmen, who were trying to calm her down, off guard, and she managed to break free and ran between the dolphin and the crewman wielding the harpoon, and stood with her legs in a defensive stance, knees bent and with her arms spread out at her sides and gave the harpoon-wielding crewman a defiant stare.

"Huh, what is this, we're saving you from this evil creature's influence," the harpoon wielder said, as he gave the woman a confused stare.

However, the woman just shook her head and continued to glare at the crewmen, and a look of disgust materialised on her face, much to the confusion of the crewmen.

"Don't worry about me, Marina," the dolphin said from behind her, "Just you get out of here."

However, the woman, Marina, turned back to look at the dolphin and her look softened somewhat as she flashed the dolphin a friendly smile, and shook her head, causing the dolphin's eyes to widen in alarm, and the three watching crewmen became even more confused.

"Huh, what do you mean you won't go?" the dolphin said in a stunned tone, "Marina…"

"What's going on here?" Eric suddenly spoke up, having seen enough.

"Oh, Prince Eric, sorry, we didn't see you there," one of the crewmen said, as he turned to regard the prince with a look of surprise.

"Never mind that, what's going on?" Eric demanded, as he glared at the three crewmen.

"Well, Your Highness… er, well… um," one of the crewmen started to say, and found that he could not find the right words to use due to Eric's intense glare making him nervous.

"You know that we were fishin', right?" a fourth crewman said, as he walked up behind Eric, and Eric nodded as he turned his attention towards him, "Well, when we brought da nets up, dere was dis dolphin along wi' dis woman."

Eric frowned as the crewman pointed at both the dolphin and the woman as he mentioned them.

"Well, we went to help the girl, but then, the dolphin started shouting at us," one of the other crewmen replied, finally finding the confidence to speak.

"They were manhandling her," the dolphin spoke up in its own defence, as it glared at the crewmen.

"We were rescuing her," one of the other crewmen shot back with a contemptuous glare, "What the heck have you done to her, you demon? You've bewitched her."

The woman shook her head while glaring at the man who had spoken, and Eric knew that the crewmen had got it wrong.

"That's a lie!" the dolphin shouted, as it glared up at the crewmen, "We were on our way to the nearest land mass before we got caught in your nets!"

"Alright, alright, enough!" Eric declared with a glare of his own that silenced all parties, and then, he turned his attention towards the dolphin.

"What's your name?" he asked simply, as he let out a sigh to calm himself down.

"My name?" the dolphin said, sounding confused, obviously being taken aback by the prince's calm tone, but after a brief few seconds, decided to answer truthfully, "Fritz, Your Highness, my name is Fritz, and that is my friend, Marina."

* * *

**Present**

Yes, that had been what had happened. While on the way back, the crew had decided to do a spot of fishing, and Marina and her dolphin friend, Fritz, had ended up getting tangled up in the fishing net, and the crew had mistaken Fritz for a demon that had bewitched Marina and all because Fritz could speak, they had mistaken him for a demon. However, Eric could see the truth. He knew that Fritz was no demon. He had just been looking out for his friend and had mistakenly believed that the crewmen were manhandling Marina, and Marina had come to the same conclusion.

Anyway, after Eric had gotten the misunderstanding cleared up, he had asked Fritz to tell him their story, since he had to admit that it was not every day that fisherman pulled up dolphins along with human girls, and it soon became apparent that Marina was a mute, in other words, she could not speak, and Fritz, after much debate had finally decided to tell him their story, though, it had taken a pleading look from Marina before he relented, but in any case, Fritz had explained that Marina was originally a mermaid and the youngest of six princesses that lived in the Undersea Kingdom, Mediterranea, and who he had convinced to go to the surface when she was not supposed to… well, from what Fritz had said, Marina had always wanted to go to the surface, but was too young, but she wanted to see it for herself, since her sisters had all gone up to the surface and told her stories of their excursions. Anyway, Fritz had convinced Marina to sneak out from the Merman Palace one night, and Marina had rescued a prince from a storm and dragged him to shore. However, for Marina, it had been love at first sight, and from what Fritz had said; both he and Marina had discovered a statue of the prince earlier that day after the ship transporting it had been sunk in a storm that had come the previous night.

Anyway, regardless, Marina had fallen in love and stayed with the prince till morning until a group of humans from a nearby building discovered the prince, but the prince had not seen Marina, since she had been forced to retreat due to the other humans. In any case, from what Fritz had said, both he and Marina had been taken back to the Merman Palace, and he would have been punished for aiding Marina in her "escape", since Marina's father had come to view him as a bad influence on his daughter, but Marina's grandmother, the Mer-King's mother, had heard his story of how Marina had saved the prince and had decided to award Marina with the pearl hairpin that she had in her hair. From what Eric understood, it acted as a pass of sorts that enabled those who wore it to come and go from the Merman Palace whenever they pleased, and only those that wore it were allowed to go to the surface. In any case, because of that, Marina and Fritz had both escaped punishment, but Marina was infatuated with the prince, and so, she had gone to see the local sea witch, whose name was so terrifying… at least according to Fritz that no one in Mediterranea dared speak it aloud and just addressed her as the Sea Witch. However, Eric had managed to get the name from Fritz, Devillia Del Ray, who was a cross between a human sorceress and a devil ray fish. In any case, Marina had gone to Devillia's domain seeking her help, and Devillia had agreed to help her, but at an awfully harsh price.

The price was that the prince had to reciprocate her love, and if not, then on the sunrise of the day after his wedding to another woman, Marina's geart would break and she would dissolve into sea foam, and so, Devillia had given Marina a potion that would transform her into a human, and took her voice from her as payment, but told Marina that she had to take the potion before sunrise the following day, otherwise the potion would lose its effect, and also, since Marina would become human, it meant that she would no longer be able to see her father, grandmother, sisters or even Fritz again, and yet, despite knowing all this, she went through with it anyway, and she had spent a full month living with the prince, and they had become close, but according to Fritz, the prince's parents were not too happy about Marina's presence in their son's life. He did not know the full story, but he did know that the prince's parents wanted him to marry a princess that they had chosen for him, and Marina had confided in Fritz… since Marina tended to move her lips whenever she wanted to communicate, and Fritz, as it turned out, just so happened to be a phenomenal lip-reader despite his young age; anyway, Marina had confided in Fritz that the prince confessed to her that he did not want to marry the princess and that he only wanted to marry the girl who had found him after he had believed that he had been washed ashore after that storm.

In truth, it was Marina who had saved him, but since she had been forced to retreat, the prince had not seen her, and so, the prince had mistakenly believed that he had been washed ashore, and the girl who had discovered him had black hair, but since he could not find her and believed that he would never meet her again, the prince had decided that he would marry Marina instead, whom he had dubbed, Princess Mermaid, since Marina was incapable of telling him her name and he had found her by the river that was close to the sea. However, in any case, Eric learned from Fritz that the prince's parents had tricked him somehow into going to the princess's kingdom, and as it turned out, the princess in question turned out, as if by some cruel twist of fate, the princess was in fact the same girl who had found him after Marina had dragged him ashore, and so, having found his girl, he had effectively cast Marina aside, which Eric found himself infuriated by.

"I can't believe that uncaring bastard," he thought to himself, feeling rather infuriated at the prince for his disregard for Marina's feelings, "He builds up that poor girl's hopes and dreams, only to shatter them and cast her aside as if she no longer matters to him once he finds his dream girl… no, that's just not right."

He shook his head as he calmed down, knowing that mulling over it would not help matters. As for him and Marina, he knew that he could marry Marina himself, and they had definitely spent long enough in each other's company for a relationship to develop, but despite everything, to him, Marina came across as nothing more than a little sister. Sure, he did care for her, but he was not in love with her and he made no secret of this. He had told Marina that he was not in love with her, since he did not want to build her hopes up like that other prince had done, and Marina, surprisingly felt the same way. She did indeed grow to care for Eric, but the feelings she had towards him were similar to the love she had for her sisters. In other words, Marina only saw Eric as an older brother figure; nothing more. That had relived Eric since he had anticipated Marina suffering from a broken heart.

Anyway, after the prince's wedding, Marina had been waiting for the sunrise that would signal her demise, but then her sisters had emerged, and along with Fritz, who had told them of the situation, they presented her with a magical knife that they had gotten from Devillia in exchange for their long hair and told her that her only hope was to plunge the knife into the prince's heart and kill him, and when his blood touched her feet, she would become a mermaid again, but unfortunately, despite everything, Marina still loved the prince and could not bring herself to kill him, and so, elected to turn into sea foam, and she then cast the knife back into the sea and jumped off the ship, but as sunrise came, for some reason or other, Marina had not transformed into sea foam, and Fritz had saved her from drowning, though, it had been quite a struggle for the small calf to keep Marina's body above the surface, and if that was not enough, Marina's family had come to the surface, and her father had effectively banished her from Mediterranea's territorial waters, as per the law of Mediterranea, and Fritz had been charged with looking after her, but Fritz had assured Eric that despite everything, Marina's family still loved her and he had to admit that he had seen Marina's sisters come to visit her. After all, the law stated that Marina's banishment was mandatory, but there was nothing in the law against visiting those who were banished, and so, with that in mind, Marina's father had allowed his daughters to abuse any loopholes in the law that they could find in regards to Marina.

"Gotta admit, as farfetched as it sounds, even if I hadn't seen Marina's sisters, I would still find myself believing it," he said aloud, causing Grimsby to turn and give him a sceptical look.

Of course, Grimsby had also been on that trip, but unfortunately, on the way back, he had taken seriously ill and had been confided to his cabin, and so, he had not seen Fritz and believed that the whole story was nothing more than a hallucination, and as for Fritz, Eric had released him back into the sea and he had followed the ship back to Denmark where he continued to meet with Marina on the shoreline just outside his castle. It was the only area that Marina went to unsupervised outside the castle, otherwise, whenever she left, Eric was always with her.

* * *

Not that far from where Eric and Grimsby, Marina tilted her head slightly as she listened in on their conversation and a small smile etched itself onto the edges of her mouth, as she knew that Eric was thinking about how they had first met. She had to admit that it seemed bizarre. She was not even supposed to be alive, let alone human. She remembered how she had tried to kill the prince that she had fallen in love with, and how, despite everything, she just could not bring herself to go through with it. Despite casting her aside in favour of the black-haired girl, Marina realised that she still loved the prince, whom she had come to know as Fjord, but still called him the prince due to her believing that it was not proper for her to address him by his given name. Anyway, despite knowing that failure to kill Fjord would result in her death, she decided to spare him and accept her fate, and had cast the knife back into the sea. She reasoned that if she dissolved into sea foam, then whenever Fjord was at sea, she could always be round him and find some way to be of service to him. Despite him choosing the black-haired girl over her, Marina could honestly say that she now understood what true love was.

True love meant putting your lover's desires ahead of one's own. Marina had learned that, and as she hesitated while standing over Fjord, she had come to realise that despite not being able to be with him, she still wanted him to be happy, even if it meant that she could not share in that happiness. There was a saying that if you truly loved someone, then you had to be willing to set them free, and if they did not come back, then it was never meant to be. Marina could now honestly say that she understood the meaning of that. There was really no point in pursuing a relationship with Fjord if he clearly did not reciprocate her feelings. She could not force him to love her, and she knew that pursuing someone that clearly did not love her back and trying to force them to love her would inevitably lead to disaster, since the resulting relationship would be anything but healthy.

In any case, Marina had jumped off the back of the ship, though, she could have sworn that she had heard Fjord calling out to her, but that had not mattered to her. There was nothing he could have done to help her anyway. The moment he had married the black-haired girl, her fate had been sealed. There was nothing he could have done to prevent it. It was too late for her. She remembered floating on the surface of the sea as she awaited the sunrise that would dissolve her into sea foam as she thought about everything she had gone through and everything she had given up in the process, and she could honestly say without a shadow of a doubt, that she had come to regret it. She had thrown everything she had away in the pursuit of love and in the end; it had all been for naught, since the man she loved had chosen another over her. It was true when Devillia had told her that love made people blind.

She felt as if she had dived headfirst into the shallow end of a swimming pool without any thought as to the consequences of such an action. When she first laid eyes on Fjord, she was instantly in love, though, to be fair, she had gained a fascination for the human world beforehand after hearing her sisters' stories of their excursions to the surface. Their stories had fascinated her and she had wanted to go up and see the surface world for herself, to see if it was as good as her sisters had all claimed. However, that night, when Fritz had convinced her to sneak out and go to the surface, seeing fireworks and the ship that Fjord was on, and seeing Fjord in person and remembering that the statue she and Fritz had found earlier that day on that sunken ship was in Fjord's likeness, she was instantly taken in by how beautiful and handsome Fjord was, and it only served to fuel her desire to experience what life was like on the surface.

However, unfortunately, Devillia had conjured up a storm that caused Fjord's ship to sink, and she had rescued him from drowning and dragged him to shore, and as she stayed with him and watched over his unconscious form, all the while begging him to wake up, her feelings for him grew, but the following morning, she had been forced to retreat as a group of humans, led by the black-haired girl that Fjord was now married to, came and found him. Nonetheless, Marina had come to the decision that she would become human so she could be with him, and she had effectively thrown caution to the wind. Later, after she had been awarded with her pearl hairpin after her grandmother had heard the story of how she had saved Fjord from drowning, she had gone to Devillia's domain to seek her help, and she had rather stupidly agreed to the deal despite Devillia's warnings about the consequences. However, she did briefly hesitate when Devillia informed her that she would be taking her voice away from her as payment for the deal, but quickly regained her resolve, and Devillia took her voice from her as payment.

"You know, it would be rather easy to blame the Prince," she thought to herself, still refusing to use Fjord's name when she referred to him, as she shook her head, "But that's wrong. It's not his fault."

That much was true, she had to admit. It would be easy to pin all the blame on Fjord and she could have someone that she could verbally rant and rave over in her mind, but despite her regret over becoming human, she still loved Fjord and her love for him was able to make her see the truth as clear as day. She could not bring herself to blame him, and thinking it over; she had long since come to the realisation that the blame clearly rested with her. It was her own fault that she was in the fix she was in. She had seen Fjord and fallen in love with him. It was not like he had told her to become human, and in fact, he had no idea that Marina even existed until he found her on the riverbank the day after she had become human, and she had to admit that had had been a rather painful experience as it felt like someone had been cutting her tail in two with a sword right down the middle and she knew that that had been her legs forming. Anyway, since she was rendered mute, she found herself unable to communicate with Fjord. Heck, she found herself to be illiterate, since she had no idea how to write, and during her month-long stay, she had found it rather difficult to adjust to life on land, but she did not care, since she had Fjord with her and in her mind, that was all that mattered.

She had to admit that it was rather stupid and selfish of her. She had been told that she would never be able to see her family again, and still, she had agreed without any ounce of hesitation whatsoever, as if her family did not really matter to her anymore, though, she loved her family very much, but at the time, she had been thinking of Fjord and had figured that it was a price worth paying, under the assumption that her family would automatically understand. She never even considered their own feelings on the issue and had just assumed that they would accept it. The possibility of her family objecting to her decision had not even entered her head. It disgusted her whenever she thought back to that faithful day, but she had to admit that at the time, all she cared about with being with Fjord and nothing else mattered; not even Fritz, despite his countless protests. She had only been thinking about herself and herself alone.

Another thing that she had disregarded was the possibility of Fjord loving another and despite Devillia warning her of the consequences, she still agreed though, she had to admit that she was a bit uneasy when Devillia had told her, but she also had to admit that it was more the fear of becoming sea foam rather than the possibility of Fjord loving someone else that caused her unease. Like with her family's possible objections, the possibility of Fjord falling in love with another woman had not entered Marina's head. She had been so blinded by her love for Fjord that she had just assumed that he would fall for her automatically and that would be that. She never gave an ounce of thought to what reality was really like. She believed that everything would be okay, and even when Fjord told her that he wanted to marry the black-haired girl that he believed rescued him from the storm when his parents wanted him to marry a princess from a neighbouring kingdom known as the Suomi Kingdom, he had told her that he believed that he would never see her again, and in that case, he would marry her instead, and it had given Marina hope as she continued to live in her own little world.

Unfortunately, though, fate, as it turned out, proved to be a cruel mistress, since Fjord's parents were not too happy over their son's decision to marry her instead of the princess that they had chosen for him, and so, Fjord had been tricked into boarding a ship bound for the Suomi Kingdom when he was told that his mother had fallen ill, but it was just a trick, and Fjord had brought her along, and so, they were forcibly separated, and then, Fjord had elected to go to the Suomi Kingdom and tell the princess to her face that he had no desire to marry her, but unfortunately, fate had once again proven just how cruel she could be when it turned out that the Suomi Princess and the black-haired girl that found him on the shore turned out to be one and the same. Marina had eventually been released, and she remembered an excited Fjord bursting into the room and rather excitedly telling her that he had found the black-haired girl, and that she was, in fact, the Suomi Princess, and it was then that Marina's delusion had shattered, just like the mirror she had dropped when Fjord announced his intention to marry the Suomi Princess.

That had been a big wake-up to Marina, and she had taken it like a slap in the face. It was as if reality, itself, had had enough of her living out her fantasies and had slapped her in the face, and she soon found herself in a dire, situation since she knew that if Fjord married the Suomi Princess, she would dissolve into sea foam, and at first, she had been scared and frightened as the reality of the situation suddenly dawned on her. However, she had informed Fritz, who in turn informed her sisters, who had gone to Devillia to ask her to save their sister, and Devillia had given them a magical knife in exchange for their long hair, and for her to avoid her fate, she had to plunge the knife into Fjord's heart, and once his blood touched her feet, she would become a mermaid again, but she could not bring herself to do it, and upon experiencing her epiphany, she no longer feared her fate, but instead chose to embrace it, though, she did regret that she would not be able to meet with her sisters.

"However, I guess fate has deemed that I haven't been punished enough," she thought, as she remembered how when the sun rose, instead of dissolving into sea foam like Devillia had said, she continued to float on the surface, and she also remembered hearing Fritz's heartbroken and panicked cries as he came after her and if not for him, she was sure that she would have drowned.

That had been a bit of a shock. Despite what Devillia had told her, she had not dissolved into sea foam and had almost drowned; not that she objected to that. In fact, despite her surprise, she decided that she would be content in drowning, since she believed that she deserved it for the heartache and sorrow that she believed she had put her family and Fritz through, though, she could not understand why she did not become sea foam. Was it possible that Devillia had lied, but then remembering just who Devillia was, she found that extremely unlikely. Devillia was a sea witch, and any deal made with her came at a hefty cost and the consequences for failure were always extremely harsh. It made no sense for Devillia to lie to her. What possible motive could she have for lying to her, and with that in mind, Marina figured that it had to be something else.

Perhaps the sea itself had interpreted her transformation from mermaid to human as an unpardonable act of treason, that it had rejected her. Maybe the sea did not want Marina inhabiting it in any shape or form, even if it was just as foam. She found herself wondering if her failure to dissolve was a punishment by the sea for her "betrayal". She had been a mermaid after all, and an inhabitant of the sea, but she had become human and elected to live on land. Perhaps the sea was punishing her for her preference to land. If she had drowned, then she had no doubt that the sea would have eventually deposited her dead body on a nearby shoreline since she knew that she would have probably ended up being washed ashore, provided that the marine life did not eat away at her beforehand, but she doubted the sea would have let them feast on her corpse. Maybe that's why Fritz had successfully managed to rescue her. However, afterwards she had met up with her father, grandmother and sisters…

* * *

**Six months previously**

Fritz had just brought Marina back to the surface after she failed to dissolve into sea foam and was feeling rather heartbroken.

"Oh, Marina," he cried in a broken-hearted tone, "Why, why didn't you do it? Why didn't you kill the Prince?"

"I couldn't," Marina mouthed simply; despite moving her lips, no sound came.

However, since Fritz could not see Marina's face, he had no idea what she had just said. Marina was currently on the surface of the sea lying on top of Fritz's small body, though, Marina was so big in comparison to the dolphin calf that Fritz found himself constantly adjusting his position so that Marina would not fall off. However, seeing her friend constantly struggling to keep her above the water, Marina felt her heart break, and tears started to well up in her eyes.

"Please, Fritz, just let me die," she begged silently, feeling rather frustrated that Fritz could not hear her, "I'm not worth it."

She found herself rather accepting towards the possibility of her own death, whether by dissolving into sea foam or drowning, it did not matter to her. She felt that she deserved to die after everything she put her family and Fritz through. She had been so foolish, blind and lovesick that she had effectively shut herself off from reality and went on unfounded assumptions that everything would be okay. She had been so selfish in her pursuit of Fjord that no one had mattered to her; not her grandmother, not her father, not her sisters and most definitely, not Fritz. She had just assumed that they would understand and accept the situation, and despite Fritz expressing that he did not want her to become a human, she had assumed that he would eventually grow to accept it, but seeing Fritz now, it was clear to Marina that he never did come to accept her choice. In fact, it had torn him apart on the inside

"Why, why do you even bother?" she mused silently, as she thought about her relationship with the young dolphin calf, "Even after everything I put you through, you still remain loyal to me, why? I'm not worthy of such loyalty."

Fritz had been her closest friend for a long time, though, she had to admit that when they first met, Fritz had been rather mean to her. She had been minding her own business and her mind had wondered as she had been swimming rather carelessly, and she had bumped into Fritz by accident, though, at the time, Fritz did not like mer-people very much and thought that they were just a species of stuck-up snobs that swam around acting as if they owned the ocean, and he had ranted and raved at Marina, causing her to cry, but afterwards, he had been guilt-tripped into apologising, since Marina did indeed apologise for bumping into him, but Fritz had been so infuriated that a mer-person had bumped into him that he had not been listening when Marina had apologised. However, once he had been forced to apologise, he soon came to realise that Marina was nothing like he envisioned and their friendship took off from there.

Since then, they had gotten pretty close. Since Marina could not go up to the surface, since she had not come of age, she had passed her time playing with Fritz and they played many games together, though, thinking back, Marina realised that those games were very childish, but they did help relieve her boredom, though, her desire to see the surface world for herself persisted, and she and Fritz would often explore sunken ships that Devillia sank whenever she had decided to conjure up a storm, like the ship that contained the statue of Fjord. Her sisters often teased her about her friendship with Fritz, claiming that if she continued to hang out with him, then she would not get a pearl hairpin, which often caused Marina to panic, but then her sisters would burst out in laughter, letting her know that they were just kidding, though, it was no secret that her father had viewed Fritz as a bad influence on her, but put up with Fritz; that is, until Fritz had convinced her to sneak out that night. The original intention had been just a quick excursion to the surface and they would return before anyone knew they were gone, but due to the storm and Marina staying with Fjord, they had been caught, and Marina remembered her father telling her that she was not to play with Fritz again, but then, her grandmother had intervened, having heard the story from the Sea-Bottom Police Patrol Leader that Fritz had told during his interrogation about how Marina had saved Fjord and how she had decided to give Marina her pearl hairpin and so, the mer-king had, albiet, rather reluctantly, rescinded his order.

However, it was afterwards that she had gone to see Devillia, and Fritz had reluctantly gone with her, though, he once threatened to tell the mer-king if she did not back down, but Marina told him that if he did tell her father, then she would never speak to him again and that had caused him to back down, and he did save her from Devillia's magically mutated polyps and a giant clam that had tried to devour her, and he decided that if she was not going to listen to him, then he would accompany her, and though he was locked out when Marina and Devillia met, he had heard their entire conversation, and was heartbroken when Marina emerged without her voice and also confessed that he did not want her to become a human, and she had tried comforting him.

However, when she thought about it and how determined she had been to become human, she had come to realise that despite her thoughts to the contrary and her attempts to comfort him, she had effectively abandoned Fritz; even refusing to let him accompany her to the Summer Palace where Fjord was located, claiming that it would only make their parting harder. However, as she thought about it, she had believed that she had effectively blown Fritz off as she remembered hearing him calling after her, and yet, she had ignored him. Now that she thought about it, it had come across as cold and uncaring. Of everyone she knew that had suffered because of her choice, Fritz suffered the most. He had come to visit her once at the Summer Palace, only to have stones thrown at him by a group of human boys, but Marina and Fjord had both come to his aid, and Fritz and Marina had a brief moment before Fritz left telling her that if she ever needed him then she was to hold her pearl hairpin up high and he would come to her, and the next time they met was after Fjord announced his marriage to the Suomi Princess, in which, she explained the situation and then Fritz had left to inform her sisters.

"I'm too good to die," she thought to herself bitterly, as she remembered what Fritz had said, "Since when is abandoning your friends and family for your own selfish desires considered good?"

She remembered how heartbroken Fritz has been when she had emerged from Devillia's home and how he confessed that he did not want her to become human. However, before she could continue down that train of thought, the sound of something emerging from the sea grabbed her attention, and her eyes widened in surprise when she saw her father, grandmother and sisters all emerge from the sea. Upon looking at her father, who had a stern, unreadable expression on his face, Marina could not help but lower her head in shame with her eyes gazing down at Fritz's blowhole as she averted her gaze. She could not look him in the eye; not after what she had done. She had become a human and turned her back on the sea. How could she possibly face her father after she had committed what could effectively be seen as an act of treason?

"Marina," he said in an unreadable tone, "Marina, look at me."

Marina shook her head as she clenched her eyes shut, fearful of what he was going to say or do to her, but if he was going to execute her, he might as well get it over with.

"So, I see that what I've been told is true, then," he said, his tone still neutral and unreadable, though, it seemed as if he had decided that let Marina continue to avert her gaze for the time being, "You have become a human, then?"

Marina only nodded in response.

"And you gave your voice to the Sea Witch as payment for her help," her grandmother added, though, her tone was not as unreadable as her son's; her tone sounded somewhat disappointed rather than furious, but to Marina, that did not matter.

She was sure that her father was furious with her and had come to either kill her or disown her. Since she was not going to turn into sea foam, and with Fritz being so determined to save her despite the way in which she had betrayed him, she figured that if she was going to die, might as well be by her father's hand. In any case, she nodded in response to her grandmother's statement.

"And I also understand that your sisters all went to the Sea Witch and traded their hair for a magical knife, which you didn't use in order to transform you back into a mermaid," he father went on, and Marina noticed all her sisters flinch at that out of the corner of her eye.

"I'm sorry, my sisters," she thought miserably, unable to meet their combined gaze as she felt that she had betrayed them as well.

True, she had decided not to kill Fjord out of the love she still had for him, and decided that he should live and be happy, but in doing so, she had also betrayed her sisters, and once again, she felt as if she had turned her back on them; just like she had turned her back on her father, her grandmother and especially Fritz. All she could do now was hang her head in shame as she awaited her fate

"Marina, look at me," her father said, repeating his earlier statement, as he moved over to her and placed his right hand underneath her chin and gently raised his daughter's head till her eyes were fixed on his face.

Marina immediately tried to look away, but her father brought his left hand up behind her head and forced her to look at him, and after a few seconds of struggling, she noticed that her father was not glaring hatefully at her like she thought he was. Okay, he did have a bit of a glare, but it was nowhere near as intense as she believed it had been. Looking into her father's eyes she could see sorrow, sadness and disappointment all mixed into one, but there was no amount of hatred present in his gaze whatsoever and that surprised her.

"I won't lie to you," he said with a sigh, "It's true that I'm very angry with you."

Marina flinched at that, despite his tone sounding more disappointed than angry.

"You threw your whole life away in pursuit of that human," he went on, his tone still sounding disappointed, "And yet despite it being for naught, you turn down the only chance you had at escaping your fate."

Marina just nodded.

"I couldn't do it," was what her lips said, "I just couldn't bring myself to do it. His happiness is my happiness. Isn't that what true love is about?"

Fortunately, her father was a lip-reader like Fritz was and understood her perfectly and much to her surprise, he smiled.

"Yes, that is true," he said in a gentler tone, as his look softened somewhat, "I see that despite your misfortunate, you've learned what true love really is, and to tell you the truth, despite you forfeiting your chance to become a mermaid again, I'm quite glad that you haven't soiled your hands in blood. To have become a mermaid again, you would have to have taken that boy's blood on your hands, and I don't think I could live with the fact that my youngest daughter had become a murderer; even if it had been necessary."

Marina's eyes widened in confusion at hearing this. Sure, she understood what her father was saying, and in truth, even if she had no longer loved Fjord, she knew that she would have still been uncomfortable with the thought of killing him, since she had never killed anyone before. Heck, she did not fancy the idea of becoming a murderer herself. Thinking it over, she had to wonder what Fjord would have thought of her if she had done the deed. On the outlook, it seemed a case of "If I can't have you, no one can", and no matter how much she tried to reason out her motives, in the end, it all boiled down to cold-blooded murder, and it seemed especially unfair that someone had to die so that another can be spared. Those had been factors in her decision to spare Fjord. Even if she no longer loved him, she probably would have spared him anyway, since killing him would have meant that she was still just as selfish as she had been before, since she would have killed him for her own benefit, and she knew that her own selfishness was to blame for the entire situation in the first place, and it was only then that she had developed the courage to face her seemingly inevitable fate. However, she thought that her father would not have cared for any of that.

"You know, Marina," her sister with the strange brownish red hair said, as she moved closer, "Thinking it over, I have to agree. I don't think I could've lived with the fact that my little sister had blood on her hands and I don't think you would be able to either."

"Regatta," Marina thought, as she stared at her sister.

Of the six mermaid princesses, Regatta was the oldest. She had a golden starfish shaped jewel with a ruby-red orb in the centre on the centre of her forehead with the two upper diagonal prongs extending all the way to her hairline that marked her position as Crown Princess, and she wore her pearl hairpin on the left side of her head near the back. She had the same colour of eyes as Marina; in fact all the sisters had the same eye colour and all the sisters, sans Marina, had what appeared to be greyish purple eye shadow between their top eyelids and eyebrows.

"Yes, I know that it's surprising, but murder is still murder, regardless of the victim's species," Marina's father said with a stern stare, "Had you actually gone ahead and killed the prince, it would have proved that you had learned nothing at all."

"I'm guessing that you left your pearl hairpin with him, haven't you, Marina?" her grandmother said, as she noticed that her pearl hairpin with missing, and Marina nodded in confirmation.

"Now then, as glad as I am that you spared the prince, the fact still remains that you are still human, and even I don't know why you didn't dissolve into sea foam," her father said in a serious tone and despite lacking any kind of anger, the seriousness was enough to cause Marina to shudder.

* * *

**Present**

Thinking back, Marina had been quite relieved that her family still loved her. It had been a bit of a surprise to learn that her family were glad that she did not kill Fjord and that she did not receive the hatred she believed her family held for her. In fact all of her sisters were glad that she spared Fjord, since none of them wanted to have a murderer in the family, and despite everything, they were proud of her for learning her lesson, though, she still believed that they should hate her for turning her back on them in the first place. They had given her a chance at redemption and she had blown it because of the price she would have had to have paid, and she still viewed it as a betrayal on her part. However, her family's lack of hatred did help ease her guilt somewhat despite what she thought.

Unfortunately, though, due to her actions and the fact that she could not return to the Merman Palace, her father had no choice, but to implement the law and banish her from Mediterranean Waters. The law was clear. Like she had anticipated, she had committed an act of treason according to the law, but since the kind of treason posed no threat to Mediterranea, itself, and had not caused anyone harm, she had escaped execution. Instead she had been banished from the Kingdom, much to Fritz's protests, but her father had charged Fritz with looking after her. However, despite her banishment, she had shared a goodbye hug with her father, grandmother and sisters and her father let her know that, despite everything, he still loved her, and as a going away present, her grandmother had given her a new pearl hairpin, which she had initially turned down due to her newly acquired status as an exile, but her grandmother insisted that she take it as a memento, taking advantage of a loophole in the law, in which, Marina's exile status would not come into effect until after she had left Mediterranean Waters, and there was nothing in the law that said that exiles had to hand back their pearl hairpins, and also, there was also nothing in the law that said that exiles were not allowed to be visited by their family and friends, which meant that Marina occasionally had visits from her sisters.

In any case, Marina and Fritz had both been escorted to Mediterranea's border with the neighbouring undersea kingdom, Atlantica, which King Triton ruled, and Marina had vague memories of actually visiting Atlantica along with her sisters and mother before she died. However, those memories were so vague that she could hardly remember them, and ever since the death of the Atlantican Queen, Athena, Triton had become so embittered by the loss of his wife, and not long afterwards, her own mother died, that Mediterranea had severed its ties with Atlantica, since she remembered that her mother had been an ambassador and had been good friends with Queen Athena, but after her death, Triton had banned music from the kingdom and after her mother died, her father had wanted nothing more to do with Atlantica so long as Triton reminded in his embittered state.

Anyway, once in Atlantican Waters, Fritz and Marina were effectively on their own, and Fritz continued to struggle to keep Marina's head above the water, but after a few hours, they had gotten tangled in fishing nets and were taken aboard a ship en route back to a kingdom in a country that Marina now knew to be called Denmark. As it turned out, the ship belonged to the kingdom's prince, a man called Eric, and he had been on his way home from a failed marriage meeting. Needless to say, Marina felt that fate was taunting her by forcing yet another prince into her life, though, he did save Fritz's life when the crewmen were planning on killing him when they had mistaken him for a demon, and he did offer Marina a place to stay in his castle as his ward, and not having anywhere to go, she accepted.

Accepting Eric's invitation had turned out to be very beneficial for her, since unlike with Fjord, Marina found herself adapting to life on land far better than she ever did at Fjord's Summer Palace. Fjord did not know her story and had not realised that she was a mermaid, but since Fritz had told Eric their story and he believed them, he had helped her with adapting to life on land, and also, unlike Fjord, Eric had someone teach her how to write so she could communicate, and she found herself writing what she wanted to say, though, even now, many of her written sentences were riddled with spelling mistakes, but that did not matter, since despite the mistakes, the messages' meanings were clear and also, Eric would correct her mistakes.

Learning about Eric, she had come to learn that his parents had died, which effectively made him the ruler of his kingdom, but the law of his kingdom stated that he could not officially inherit the title of King until he married, and unfortunately, Eric was rather choosey over the type of girl he wanted, and he wanted to marry for love. He wanted to marry a girl; not for wealth or status, or to form a political alliance, but he wanted to marry someone who would love him for him and not because he was a prince. He wanted someone who shared his passions for the sea, and Eric took a very active role while at sea, helping the crewmen with their chores instead of confining himself to his cabin. He was happy and knew how ordinary people lived their lives, unlike Fjord, who from what Marina could gather, had been quite sheltered and only left the Summer Palace to see to his royal duties, and while at sea, Marina had not seen him help any of the crewmen with their chores. Yes, Eric may be a prince like Fjord, but he was also remarkably different from Fjord.

However, despite not being a victim of an arranged marriage like Fjord was, Eric was under pressure to find a wife and settle down, though, the laws of his kingdom were flexible in that Eric could practically marry anyone he chose regardless of their status, but the people of his kingdom were expecting him to choose a neighbouring kingdom's princess. Fortunately, they were not constantly hounding him and on his back. His confidant, Grimsby, in particular, respected his wishes and gave him his space, only bringing it up occasionally to remind him of the situation, and Marina knew that Eric could marry her if he chose, since there was no one in the way to object like Fjord's parents, who had insisted that he marry the Suomi Princess.

However, despite living together with Eric for the past six months, Marina just did not love him in that way. Sure, she cared for him and was thankful for everything he had done for her, but whenever she thought of Eric, he came across as something akin to an older brother, and she was relieved to learn that he felt the same way in that she was more like a little sister him rather than a lover, and she had to hand it to Eric for his honesty. He had been the one who had come and told her that he did not wish to marry her, though, she could tell that he had been nervous and had obviously been anticipating a scene, but she had eased his fears in writing down that she felt the same way.

In truth, it was kind of like Fjord. He had told her that he had desired to marry the black-haired girl that found him on the shore, but he had given her a sense of hope when he said that since he did not know where she was, and figured that he would never meet her again, that he would rather marry her instead. That had filled her with hope, and in her own delusional little world, she was okay with that, but as it turned out, the Suomi Princess that Fjord's parents had chosen for him had turned out to be the black-haired girl, and that had shattered her hope and woken her up to reality. Of course, as much as she wanted to be angry at Fjord, she found that she could not. After all, he had told her beforehand of his desire to marry the black-haired girl and had only chosen to marry her because he could not find the black-haired girl. He had told her that, and yet, she had completely ignored him, since she believed that he would never find her again. The possibility that he would find the black-haired girl never really entered her head, so when it turned out that the Suomi Princess was the black-haired girl, it had come as quite a shock.

However, despite what Eric thought, Fjord had not been an "uncaring bastard" like he thought. In Marina's mind, he had just been rather stupid, and from the way he announced his marriage to her, it was clear that he still considered her a friend, though, Marina had to admit the irony of the situation. She had given up everything in the assumption that everything would turn out okay, without considering the possibility of something going wrong and had detached herself from reality, and the way Fjord had acted was the same. When he told her of his "good fortunate", the possibility that she had objections to his union with the Suomi Princess did not even enter his mind, just like the possibility of something going wrong never entering her own mind.

"Kind of ironic when you think about it," she thought to herself with a silent chuckle.

However, Eric had been quite forward with her and had told her that he would not marry her as the next best thing if he could not find his ideal girl, and while thinking about that, a thought just occurred to Marina. She had to wonder what would have happened if Fjord had succeeded in pushing past his parents' opposition to her, and they did marry, only for him to find the black-haired girl. He did state that he only wanted to marry her because he could not find the black-haired girl. However, what would it have meant for her deal with Devillia if Fjord had married her, but discovered the black-haired girl after their wedding?

Anyway, she was brought out of her thoughts as she noticed Eric and his dog, Max coming up behind her.

As for her relationship with Max, he absolutely adored her, unlike Fjord's cat, Jemmy, whom Marina quickly learned did not like her to say the least. Max on the other hand had grown quite fond of her, and she was the only one besides Eric that had gotten really close to him, and despite Marina being mute, she issued commands with her hands and he obeyed them as if they were coming from his master. That was something that Eric had noted, since Max usually was usually weary and shy round strangers. However, Marina had managed to set him at ease and even get him to follow her commands.

"Hey, are you okay?" Eric asked curiously, and Marina just nodded.

He then let out a smile of his own. In truth, he believed that Marina was a mermaid and he knew how she felt. He knew that she felt like she was being punished for her own stupidity. He had to admit that on the outlook, it did seem that Marina had no one to blame but herself for ending up in the situation she was in, but from the way Marina went around blaming herself, it was as if she believed that she had been some kind of heartless monster that had committed some unpardonable crime and that was not the case. Marina had just been stupid, nothing more, and he knew that when it came to Fritz, Marina's guilt only increased, and Eric knew that Fritz had not taken Marina's decision well, and in fact, it had torn him up on the inside, and Marina believed that she had cruelly abandoned him.

"That's not true," he thought to himself, knowing that it was pointless in trying to convince Marina otherwise, "I'll admit that it was stupid of you, but you're not a heartless monster. You wouldn't be upset over it if you were."

"Fritz," Marina thought, as her mind wondered to her dolphin friend, "I'm so sorry for everything I've put you through. How can you still stomach me and go out of your way to help me. I abandoned you. I blew you off as if I didn't really need you anymore, and yet, you still stick by me, why?"

That much she believed to be the truth. She had ignored Fritz when he voiced his objections, and even though, one could argue that the reason it seemed that she had callously left him as he called out to her was due to her lack of a voice, she believed that she really had coldly and callously abandoned him. All their games in the past had been pretty childish, and upon earning the pearl hairpin, her days as a child were effectively over. Heck, she even stated as much in a song she had sang at her Coming-of-Age Ceremony, and she had to admit that the main reason she had hung around with Fritz was because she was bored, since she could not go to the surface and had been just passing time, but she had cared about Fritz, and before Fjord entered the picture, she had originally intended to take Fritz with her to the surface, but after Fjord entered the picture, all she thought about was him and everyone else ceased to matter to her. How Fritz could continue to stand by her and support her was a mystery. She would understand if he had abandoned her and left her to drown. In fact that's what she believed she deserved. Fritz would not abandon her in doing so, since, in her own mind, she had abandoned Fritz first.

Anyway, as Eric watched Marina, he nodded to himself as he resolved to help her realise that she was blowing her self-blame out of proportions. Sure, he did not wish to marry her, but he wanted her to be happy. The mermaid rejected by the sea and forced to live on land as punishment for her stupidity. That was a bit much in Eric's opinion, and despite everything; her family and Fritz still loved her. Eric had met Marina's sisters a few times, and they still loved her despite everything, and were actually glad that Marina had spared the prince, and Eric had to admit that, despite his anger over the prince casting her aside in favour of his dream girl, he was glad as well, since like her sisters, he would probably be uncomfortable round her knowing that she had blood on her hands.

* * *

**Author's Notes** – My latest story and I've decided to try something different from anime for a chance (not entire true since this is a crossover involving an anime). As you know, this is a crossover between two adaptations of Hans Christian Anderson's The Little Mermaid and just so you know it's a femslash story between Marina and Ariel. Also in the anime adaptation, I know that the Sea Witch was not given a name, but I gave her one to differentiate her from Ursula and as for the Prince's name in the anime adaptation, according to Wikipedia, Fjord is his name, though I'm sure that was probably a mistake since Fritz did mention the Fjord River, but for the purposes of this fic, his name is Fjord and he'll feature in a later chapter along with his wife, Cecilia (her name according to Wikipedia).


	2. Another Curious Little Mermaid

**Ariel and Marina, the Two Little Mermaids**

**Another Curious Little Mermaid**

**Disclaimer** – I do not own any of the characters from the Little Mermaid. The Walt Disney adaptation is the property of the Walt Disney Company, the anime adaptation is the property of Toei Animation and both adaptations are based on the story by Hans Christian Anderson.

* * *

Down in the depths of the North Sea, not far from the West Danish Coast, was the undersea kingdom of Atlantica, which was dominated by the Royal Palace, those tall structure and high-reaching spires dominated the seabed, as its golden sparkle shimmered in the sea, bathing the surrounding area in a beautiful golden glow. Even at night, one would have mistaken it to have been daytime due to the brightness of the glow, though, despite its name, it was not situated in the Atlantic Ocean. However, Atlantica's territorial waters were vast, covering the North Sea, the English Channel, the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland, the Irish Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, itself. The quickest way from the Atlantic Ocean to Atlantica would be to travel up via the English Channel, though, some travelled via the Northern Route between Scotland and the Isles of Orkney and Shetland or via the Arctic Ocean; it really depended on where the various mer-folk that inhabited the Atlantic Ocean lived.

Anyway, whereas on the surface, Marina and Prince Eric reminisced over how they had come to meet, and in Marina's case, remember her own troubles, down in the depths of the sea, mer-folk from all across Atlantica's Waters were gathering in the main palace concert hall as a concert was being held in King Triton's honour in order to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the lifting of the ten-year music ban that had been in effect since after the death of Queen Athena.

The room, itself, was rather huge with a mixture of natural rock and manmade… or in this case, merman-made structures. The room was circular with the perimeter being merman-made. The walls were basically a rather deep brownish green colour with rather thin pillars that went up, forming huge arch-shaped gaps. There was also a smaller layer of arches with slightly wider pillars situated on top of the first layer and the arches on the second layer were considerably smaller than the ones that made up the first layer, and on top of that, was the roof with a chandelier in the centre. The walls also had carved decorations between the two layers of arches and also various colonies of purple algae were visible in places.

The audience all swam stationary in front of two rounded, bowl-shaped depressions, the first of which had various outcrops down inside it with one outcrop in front of it; this was where the conductor and band, that was made up of seven fish; three with coral stringed instruments, three with coral trumpets, and one with a coral saxophone and an octopus with an undersea drum kit were situated. The larger depression was seemingly empty and this represented the main stage, and behind it was a huge arch that was made up of natural rock and had vertical lines of rock running down the inside of the arch, mimicking bars, though, if one swam over to the "bars", the would find that they were too wide apart to be classed as bars. Anyway, the natural rock structures were littered inside the room, mostly behind the audience.

The audience, itself, was mainly made up of mer-folk, though, there were a few other sea creatures present as well, such as a few species of fish and a couple of dolphins. In the centre of the audience was none other than Princess Regatta and four of her five sisters. Aquaria was the second oldest and had purple hair and her hairstyle covered her left eye and she wore her pearl hairpin on the left side of her head near the back of her neck. Tida was the third oldest and had dark blue hair and was styled in the shape of a rather wide arch and her pearl hairpin was on the left of her head near the top and in the centre. Submara was the next one in the birth order and had orange hair with a small fringe over her forehead and wore a white hairband over the top of her head and her pearl hairpin was situated on top of and in the centre of her hairband, meaning that it was on top of her head. Corolla was the youngest; really, she was the second youngest, but the youngest one present and she had green hair styled in what was known in the modern day and age as an afro, and was rather bushy looking, and she wore her pearl hairpin on the right side of her head in stark contrast to her sisters and also, the shade of her hair was dependant on how much light shone on it; the more light then the lighter the shade and the less light, the darker the shade.

Unfortunately for Corolla, much to her chagrin, because of the style and colour of her hair, she often ended up being teased by her older sisters, and since her hair resembled a bush, she had earned the name, "Bush-Head", and her sisters enjoyed teasing her; especially now since Marina was no longer around.

"Damn you, Marina," she thought, feeling rather miffed, as she thought about her, now human, little sister, "I don't care how much I love you, if you ever somehow manage to become a mermaid again, you'll pay for leaving me to become the new teasing victim."

As for what happened to Marina, all the sisters were in an agreement. In all honestly, they had been rather shocked and surprised at first. It was the day after Marina's Coming-of-Age Ceremony when they noticed that she had gone missing, and then, Fritz came along, rather heartbroken and explained to them what had happened; that Marina had fallen in love with the human she had rescued from that storm, and had gone to the Sea Witch, Devillia Del Ray, and had become a human in order to be with him.

Naturally, this had come as a massive shock to them, and in truth; they all felt rather infuriated and betrayed. It had really infuriated them that their little sister had abandoned and discarded them in order to be with someone she did not really know. She hardly knew the Prince and had not spoken a single word to him, and yet, she became human, just like that; as if that's what the Prince had wanted. It was clear that Marina had been clearly going on assumptions and the fact that she had never discussed it with any of them beforehand was what hurt the most. She had just assumed that they would agree and accept the situation with no objections whatsoever and had not considered the possibility that they had objections in the first place.

However, despite their anger and feelings of betrayal, Marina was still their little sister, and there was just something about Marina that they just could not stay mad at for long, and so, with that in mind, they had all made periodic visits to the Summer Palace to check up on Marina, though, they never confronted her over the issue, feeling that they would have allowed their anger to get the best of them if they had.

However, Fritz had also informed them of the consequences that would befall Marina if the Prince did not reciprocate her feelings and married another, and that had them all worried, since none of them had wanted to lose their sister, but unfortunately, that was exactly what had happened, and Marina had soon found herself in a massive bind of which there seemed to be no way out of.

However, in desperation, they had all gone to Devillia, against their better judgement, and pretty much demanded that she do something to save Marina, and Devillia had surprisingly agreed to help them, but at the cost of their long hair. She gave them a magical knife and instructed them to give it to Marina, and she explained that Marina had to plunge the knife into the Prince's heart, and that when his blood touched her feet, she would transform into a mermaid again, but stated that she would be keeping her voice to teach her a lesson in how she should not make risky deals with shady characters over matters she had no control over.

Nonetheless, despite their misgivings over it, since it meant that Marina would have to take someone's life in order to become a mermaid again, they had agreed knowing that further negotiation with Devillia would be pointless. Despite everything, all the sisters hated the deal and did not want anyone to die. Sure, they could easily blame the Prince for their sister's troubles, and for a while, most of them did blame him until Regatta pointed out that the Prince had no idea that Marina existed until he found her by the riverbank, and Marina had made the decision to become human herself with the Prince having no say in it whatsoever. However, none of the sisters had really wanted the Prince to die, but their desperation to have their sister back had ultimately won out in the end, and so, they had confronted Marina and explained the situation.

However, as it turned out, Marina did indeed learn her lesson. That was proven when she could not bring herself to kill the Prince and elected to dissolve into sea foam instead. She could have killed the Prince and returned to being a mermaid, but instead, she had chosen not to, believing that killing the Prince for her own benefit was selfish and would have proven that she had learned nothing at all. She still loved the Prince and had decided that his happiness was her happiness. She wanted him to be happy and put his well-being ahead of her own. In short, she had learned the meaning of true love and that had relieved her sisters, since despite agreeing to the deal with Devillia, none of them wanted their little sister to have blood on her hands, and they all knew that it would have ultimately devastated her in the end if she had gone through with it.

However, as if, by some intervention of fate, Marina, for whatever reason, had not turned to sea foam come sunrise, which caused her sisters to breathe a sigh of relief, since they still had their sister, but unfortunately, the law had stated that she had to be banished, and so, their father, King Kraken of Mediterranea had banished her, though, he allowed them to go and visit her, since there was nothing in the law that said they were forbidden from seeing her, and so, they abused that loophole regularly, and with their father and grandmother's blessings. They had discovered that Marina had been taken in by yet another human prince, but unlike the last one, he was a lot more considerate towards Marina, and despite not being in love with her, Prince Eric continued to house her in his palace. Sure, they knew Eric was not in love with Marina, but that did not matter to them, since he continued to look after their sister, and unlike the other prince, Eric had made no illusion that he was in love with Marina; he had been very straight and forward with her, but regardless, Marina still stayed with him because she had nowhere else to go.

It was a funny story how they met. Regatta chuckled as she thought about it. A few hours into their exile, after being escorted to Mediterranea's border with Atlantica,, Marina and Fritz had been caught in fishing nets, and the ship's crewmen were going to kill Fritz, believing that he was some sort of demon and that they were saving Marina from his "influence", but Eric had intervened and released Fritz back into the sea, and had agreed to house Marina. Regatta remembered her and her sisters meeting him a couple of times and he did come across as a charming and nice man. He was also very friendly with animals and he told them of his situation, and that despite not falling in love with Marina, he would continue to house her indefinitely, since she had nowhere else to go and he just could not throw her out onto the streets, for which they were grateful to him for.

In any case, they were all currently at the concert because they were visiting Marina, and since Marina was out at sea, they needed something to occupy themselves with while they waited for her to return to land. Of course, they could easily go looking for her at sea, but then, they ran the risk of the crewmen of Eric's ship seeing them, and it was forbidden for mer-folk and humans to socialise. Of course, Eric was an exception, but none of the sisters felt that the crewmen could be trusted with keeping knowledge of their existence a secret and knew that there were quite a few humans that would look to capture them if they knew of the existence of mer-folk, and with that in mind, they decided that it was too risky to approach Marina while she was at sea.

"I still can't believe that Triton lifted the music ban that he had in place," Tida was saying to Aquaria, as Regatta was brought out of her thoughts, "I wonder what happened."

Regatta nodded as she overheard her sister. She had to admit that that did interest her. Whenever they came to visit Marina, they knew that they were crossing the border into Atlantican Waters, which King Triton ruled. In the past, Mediterranea and Atlantica had rather strong ties, and in the past, Triton and Kraken were similar in personality. The reason for those strong ties was due to Kraken's wife, Hera's close friendship with Queen Athena. Hera had been an ambassador to Atlantica, and she often brought her daughters along with her, though, that had been so long ago that the Mediterranean Princesses had all mostly forgotten, but Regatta had a few clear memories of her excursions to Atlantica.

She and her sisters had all been intrigued at the differences between Atlantican mer-folk and Mediterranean mer-folk. Atlantican mer-folk's tails were a variety of different colours. Each mer-person had their own tail colour and their caudal fins, as well at the fin situated on the borderline between tail and upper body were always a lighter shade of their tail colour. By comparison, Mediterranean mer-folk all mostly had greyish blue tails that sometimes appeared greyish green whenever certain types of light shone on them. Also, Mediterranean mer-folk did not have a fin-like borderline between their tails and upper bodies and instead had a line of light blue scales and above that a line of pink scales round their waists that acted as a borderline. The caudal fins of Atlantican and Mediterranean mer-folk were also different. The caudal fins of Atlantican mer-folk were wide, long, almost transparent and could bend and be rolled up easily, whereas the caudal fins of Mediterranean mer-folk were the same shade as the rest of their tails, a lot smaller, thinner and incredibly stiff and could not be bent or rolled up.

Also, another fundamental difference between the two types of mer-folk was that Atlantican mermaids tended to wear seashell bras over their breasts and normally, those seashells were the same colour as their tails, but there were a few exceptions, whereas Mediterranean mermaids all had naturally long hair and relied on it to cover their modesty.

However, this difference in culture did lead to a few complaints from Mediterranean tourists, who had been arrested for indecent exposure in the past, since by Atlantican law, all mermaids were required to wear seashell bras to cover their modesty, and since the Mediterranean mermaids where in Atlantican territory, they were required to obey Atlantican law, and so, to solve this problem, at each border checkpoint between Atlantica and Mediterranea, there was a store dedicated to selling seashell bras, and all Mediterranean mermaids were required by law to purchase one if they wanted to enter Atlantican Waters. In fact, Regatta and her sisters were all wearing seashell bras and each one was the same colour as their wearer's hair. In any case, no Mediterranean mermaid was allowed into Atlantican Waters unless she purchased a seashell bra, but Atlantican mermaids travelling to Mediterranea were not required to remove there seashell bras.

"Kinda stupid if you ask me, but the law's the law," Regatta thought with a chuckle, as she mused over how ridiculous it was; Mediterranean mermaids could only come and go from Atlantica whenever they pleased so long as they had a seashell bra and yet, Atlantican mermaids could come and go as they pleased from Mediterranea without fulfilling any obligation whatsoever.

As far as Mediterranean mermaids were concerned, their long hair was enough, and even though, she and her sisters had lost theirs to Devillia, their hair had rather quickly grown back in the past six months, but they still wore the seashell bras in order to comply with Atlantican law.

Nonetheless, unfortunately, Queen Athena was killed eleven years ago during an excursion to the surface, and as a result, King Triton had become rather bitter, banning music from his kingdom, and had also developed a xenophobic hatred for humans, blaming them for Athena's death, and not long after that, Hera died in an accident, and as a result, Kraken and Triton had become so divided in their opinions of the surface world; Triton growing to hate the surface world, whereas Kraken still maintain his neutral stance on the issue of humans that they had severed ties with one another.

However, fortunately, Triton and Kraken had agreed not to drag the people of their kingdoms into their falling out, so despite them both not talking to one another, the ordinary mer-folk were allowed to travel between the two kingdoms as they pleased, and there were a few business deals that crossed the border; just so long as it had nothing to do with Triton or Kraken, they were quite happy to allow their respective peoples to do as they pleased. In fact, the five princesses had noticed that they were not the only Mediterraneans in attendance. There were quite a few marriages between Atlantican and Mediterranean mer-folk, and Regatta noticed that the majority of other Mediterranean mer-folk in attendance were with Atlantican mer-folk.

Anyway, before she could ponder on this further, behind the audience, a group of trumpet fish with red bodies, pink faces, bluish grey fins and wearing sashes, each first one wearing a purple sash and each second one wearing a yellow sash all lined out and stood at attention, closing their eyes as they played their trumpet-like noses. To their left, a small orange seahorse wearing a ruffle collar came out with a professional and calm look on his face.

"A-ha-ahem, His Royal Highness, King Triton," the little seahorse declared, as he held his pectoral fins up to his left and then a fanfare started playing as three dolphins swam out from between two pillars of natural rock structures with a ledge beneath the front.

Anyway, the three dolphins emerged and were pulling a shell chariot that was made from the top of a turtle's shell and in the shell chariot, holding onto the reins of the three dolphins was a really old, though heavily muscular and well-built merman with long white hair that went down to the bottom of the back of his stomach and also had at heavily set moustache and beard that ran down to the top of his abdomen. He also had grey eyebrows that were slowly turning white, but had not become as white as the rest of his hair and also had an aqua blue tail and dark blue eyes. He wore two golden gauntlets on his arms that ran from his wrists up to his elbows and which were decorated with ovular bumps. On the top of his head was a five-pronged golden grown, and in his right hand, he wielded a golden three-pronged trident that started to glow and hum as the three dolphins moved to the right of the crowd and circled round the room.

The people all cheered wildly as King Triton himself had graced them with his presence and the three dolphins pulling his chariot suddenly swam to the left and to the centre of the room, and Triton's trident started to emit golden sparks, and as he passed underneath the chandelier, he gently thrust his trident towards it, sending the sparks towards the chandelier, which then deflected them down onto the crowd, who all still continued to cheer.

"My, he's getting on a bit, isn't he?" Submara whispered to her sisters, "Didn't he have red hair the last time we saw him?"

"That was over eleven years ago," Tida replied with a shrug, "Besides, I can't quite remember what he actually looked like."

"Yeah, but wasn't there this small red crab that we used to swim ragged?" Corolla asked curious, as she seemed to vaguely recall a few of her memories.

"Shush!" Regatta scolded, as the fanfare slowly died down.

"And presenting, the distinguished Court Composer, Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian," the little seahorse went on as he held up his pectoral fins to a different opening that was made up of natural rock structures on each side.

A kazoo-like instrument started playing as two small goldfish appeared hauling in a small red crab that was mounted to a small, blue, segmented and round snail-like shell emerged. The shell itself had four rounded segments; one huge one at the front and the other three were each smaller than the one that to its right and the last one came to a cone-shaped point. The crab, Sebastian was situation in a hard and solid pouch like appendix at the left end of the shell with only his front pair of legs hanging over the top of the "pouch".

The crowd, instead of cheering like they had done when Triton had emerged, only gave him a rather mild round of applause as he waved his right pincer at them and blew a kiss.

"That's him," Corolla whispered with a snigger, "He's the one we constantly swam circles around."

"Yeah, I remember him," Aquaria whispered with a snigger of her own, "I swear, if he had hair, he'd probably have pulled it all out by the time we were finished with him."

"I thought only hermit crabs took other animals' shells," Submara giggled jokingly, as she mocked the little red crab's shell carriage.

"Well, maybe he's become confused as to what species of crab he is," Tida joked with a giggle.

However, suddenly, the two goldfish that were pulling him suddenly shot off and Sebastian tightened his hold on the reins as he felt as if his steads almost pulled him out of the shell that he was using as his carriage. However, the two fish came to an abrupt halt before rearing up and making a sound similar to a horse, and before Sebastian could recover, they suddenly burst off again, swimming upwards at an arc as they brought Sebastian right up beside Triton.

"How much you want to bet that this'll end in disaster?" Corolla challenged with a rather mischievous and challenging grin, as she faced her sisters.

Regatta shook her head with a somewhat agitated look on his face.

"Behave yourselves!" she warned sternly, "We're guests here. We maybe Princesses, but we are not in our home kingdom, and so, I suggest that you all knock it off and set an example."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Submara said dismissively, clearly not really caring, which only caused her sister to let out a rather frustrated sigh.

* * *

Up with Sebastian and Triton, Triton smiled as he turned to regard the Court Composer, who, as it turned out, was also his most trusted advisor and number two.

"I'm really looking forward to this performance, Sebastian," the Atlantican Sea King said in a voice filled with anticipation.

"Oh, Your Majesty, dis will be de finest concert I have ever conducted," Sebastian replied with a laugh in a Caribbean accent, as Triton came to the ledge in front of where he hand made his entrance and then released his hold on the reins, causing the three dolphins to swim off as his shell chariot landed on the ledge, "Your daughters, dey will be spectacular."

However, just then, the two goldfish became impatient and started to shoot off again, only for Sebastian and pull back on the reins, but they had almost succeeded in completely pulling him out of the shell, and it flipped upside down, much to the Sea King's amusement.

"Yes, especially my little Ariel," Triton said with a laugh as he leaned closer to Sebastian with his arm over his chest and his hand at the side of his mouth and as for Sebastian, he had heard his liege's comment even as he climbed on top of his shell and turning it right-side up.

"Yes, yes, she has de most beautiful voice," Sebastian said in agreement, as he got back into his "pouch", and with a yank of the reins, caused the two fish to move forward as the sound of stringed instruments tuning up started to flood the room.

Triton just chuckled in amusement as his number two's slight misfortunate with his steeds.

"If only she'd show up for rehearsals once in a while," Sebastian went on quietly, as he grumbled to himself in frustration, as he thought about Ariel's conduct in the past.

He swore that Triton's youngest daughter, Ariel, would be the death of him. Her main problem, the red crab concluded, was that she did not act in the way that he felt a Princess of Atlantica should act. Sure, she was the youngest and the chances of her six sisters all dying and her inheriting the throne were almost non-existent, but she was still a princess and Sebastian felt that she should act like one. Besides, it was because of her that the music ban had been lifted when he had been arrested for attending an underground music club, and she had broken him out of jail and they both journeyed together, and Ariel had found an old music box that her father had made for her mother.

However, back then, Sebastian had a rivalry with Marina Del Rey, a mermaid who had been the governess of Triton's seven daughters, and it had been her who had revealed the existence of the music club to Triton when she followed Ariel and her sisters when she showed them where it was, and had gotten him arrested and all because she could have his job as Triton's attaché. Anyway, after Ariel broke him and his band, the Catfish Club Band out, Marina resolved to kill them and led an army of electric eels, and Ariel saved his life from Marina, which Triton had seen and it was after Ariel returned the music box to him, which he had discarded himself that he had decided to lift the ban and so, this concert was also in much in honour of Ariel, herself, due to her role in having the music ban lifted.

However, unfortunately, Ariel hardly ever showed up for rehearsals. She did not appear to take anything seriously, and was far too curious and adventurous for Sebastian's liking. To him, Ariel seemed to have skewed priorities, believing that her adventures were more important than this concert or her duties as a princess, and she always seemed to be off in her own little world. In fact, the number of times that Ariel had actually carried out her duties and took anything seriously could be counted on one hand, and it riled Sebastian something terrible that Ariel would rather be off doing who knew what rather than fulfilling her obligations.

Nonetheless, putting his troubles with Ariel to the back of his mind, the two goldfish hauled Sebastian's shell carriage down to the outcrop at the top of the small depression, which was obviously the conductor's podium.

* * *

"Hey, Corolla," Aquaria whispered to her green-haired sister, as Sebastian's shell carriage made its way down to the podium as a spotlight from high up in the ceiling shone down on him and followed the shell's movements, "You know that you were wondering if something was going to go wrong? Well, I'll take that bet."

"Quiet!" Regatta scolded in a hushed voice with a glare levelled at the rest of her sisters.

* * *

When Sebastian's shell carriage reached the podium, he released the reins of the two goldfish and they both swam away as the shell descended down to the far edge of the podium nearest the audience. Once the shell had landed, Sebastian stood up on the edge of the "pouch" and brought his pincers up to the top edge of his own natural shell and adjusted it slightly as if her were fixing a shirt collar, and then, he adjusted his shell at the back, and then, he reached down inside the shell carriage and after a brief struggle, he pulled out a set of music sheets, and then, he brought them to the front of the podium that was curved upwards and placed it down before looking over the top, and then, he swam upwards slightly as he took a small black baton and tapped the side of the podium, and then, he started waving it in front of the band, which started to play a rather fast and upbeat tune that probably would have been mistaken for a children's tune.

As the intro concluded, three clams sitting on top of fake coral branches and coral plants beside them rose up from the huge depression and as the intro completely concluded the middle clam opened followed by the one to its left, and then, the one to its right opened and each clam revealed two mermaids inside each.

"Ah, we are the daughters of Triton," they all started to sing as their respective clam opened, "Great father, who loves us and named us well…"

At hearing this, Triton raised his posture somewhat boastfully with his arms folded as he beamed with pride over his daughters.

"Attina, Aquata, Arista, Andrina, Adella, Alana…" they continued to sing as each individual mermaid swam above the others and sang a few ah notes as their name was mentioned, and Sebastian swam higher and higher with a rather proudly happy look on his face as he witnessed his composition come together.

"And then there is the youngest, in her musical debut," the sisters all continued to sing as they brought their heads together in a circle as a fourth clam rose up behind them and on either side of the clam were blue fake coral plants that were rotating downwards, "Our seventh little sister, we're presenting her to you…"

As they continued to sing, they all swam towards the clam and circled it and ushered their hands towards it in a presenting gesture.

"To sing a song Sebastian wrote, her voice is like a bell," they went on singing, as Sebastian, upon hearing the mentioning of his name, turned to face the audience with a rather proud, cheesy and somewhat smug and arrogant grin on his face, and Triton looked on with a smile of anticipation as he could not wait to hear his youngest sing, "She's our sister, Ari…"

However, when the clam opened up, aside from a huge blue pillow, the clam was empty, causing everyone to gasp in shock and Sebastian unwittingly threw away his baton as a shocked look of disbelief washed over his face.

"Their sister, the no-show," Sebastian heard someone in the audience whisper, though, despite their efforts to keep quiet, their voice was still loud enough to carry over the entire room.

"I guess you win the bet, eh, Corolla," another voice came, causing Sebastian to turn and glare into the audience, and he gasped when he noticed that in attendance were five of six mermaids that he thought he would never have to deal with again.

"What are dey doin' 'ere?" he thought to himself, as memories of how the six Princesses of Mediterranea had swam circles round him as he tried to look after them eleven years ago assaulted his mind.

Unlike the five sisters, whose memories were vague and only clearly recalled bits and pieces, Sebastian, unfortunately, remembered everything they had done to him. Not only did they swim him ragged, but he had become their unwilling personal butt monkey and had become the butt of their jokes, and unfortunately, it still caused him to shiver every time he thought about it.

"Yes, I guess I do," Corolla said in reply to her sister, whom Sebastian recognised as Aquaria, "But I wonder why the seventh… what's her name…?"

"Ariel, I think I remember it being Ariel," the blue-haired mermaid that Sebastian remembered as Tida said, as she looked in his direction with a rather boastful smirk.

"Dey haven't changed one bit," Sebastian scoffed angrily, as he shot them a glare, though, if he had been paying attention, he would have realised that Regatta was the only one not participating, and in fact, had a hand over her face as she shook her head in embarrassment.

"Ah, yes," Corolla went on, "I have to wonder why Princess Ariel never showed up."

"Maybe she's embarrassed at taking directions from such a short stack," the orangette that Sebastian knew to be Submara suggested, as she rather rudely pointed at Sebastian, who gasped at the insult about his small size, and in truth, he felt rather hurt.

"Are you sure?" Tida said in a tone of mock shock, as she looked in Sebastian's direction.

"Of course, I mean look at him, he's so small, it'll be rather easy to squish him," Submara laughed, as Sebastian shot the five sisters a rather insulted glare.

"Yeah and what about his name, what's with that?" Corolla put in, as she looked at Sebastian, "Horatio Thelonious Ignatius Crustaceous Sebastian, what sort of name is that? One might come to the conclusion that he's perhaps compensating for something, since it's so long."

"Yeah, I'll have to agree with you there," Aquaria said before they all, with the exception of Regatta burst into laughter.

Unfortunately, despite their efforts to keep quiet, their voices had still echoed throughout the room, and so, the rest of the audience had heard them and when they burst into laughter, the audience joined in as they all laughed and pointed at Sebastian, who was seething with fury over having been insulted and humiliated by the foreign princesses. If he was not already red in colour then he would have been red in the face, though, anyone who noticed him may have noticed that the shade of red in his face had darkened considerably.

Unfortunately, Sebastian was not the only one who was enraged, as Triton grabbed his trident, which started to glow dangerously and the glow reflected off his eyes, giving them a rather dark brownish red colour that seemed to match his mood perfectly.

"ARIEL!" he roared in seething rage, as he leaned towards the empty clam.

That caught the audience's attention, and the king's change in mood caused them all to stop laughing as they all backed away nervously.

Regatta swam over to Sebastian with the intention of apologising to him for her sisters' behaviour, knowing that they had rather brashly and uncaringly hurt his feelings. Sure she had to admit that back when they were children, they were young and stupid and did not know any better. However, nowadays, they were a lot older and Regatta would have liked to have thought that they were more mature and had grown out of that sort of behaviour. Unfortunately, with her sisters, it seemed that she had figured wrong, and she just knew that she was in for an earful from Sebastian, since she knew that he would automatically associate her with her sisters.

* * *

Meanwhile, while Regatta and the rest of her sisters were occupied with the concert, Fritz was currently following Triton's seventh daughter, Ariel and her tropical fish friend, Flounder. Ever since he had been charged with looking after Marina, he had effectively been banished along with her, and since she had been taken in by Prince Eric, the young dolphin calf found that he had nothing to do most of the time, though, he did visit Marina occasionally… well, Marina often came down to the shoreline from Eric's palace and Fritz knew that it would not do him any good to lie and wait all the time, since he knew that he would have eventually succumbed to starvation, and so, he had decided that while Marina was occupied on land, he would find something to occupy himself with as well, and if Marina ever wanted to see him, she would do as Fritz instructed her to when he first came to see her at the Prince's Summer Palace and hold up her pearl hairpin into the air and it would send out a signal that Fritz somehow managed to receive.

Anyway, while exploring the local area, he had long since come across Princess Ariel and he had to say that he was astounded at just how similar to Marina she was. Like Marina, she was the youngest of many sisters, though, unlike Marina, who had five sisters, Ariel had six, and also, like Marina, Ariel had a curiosity about the surface world.

However, whereas their curiosities were similar, the circumstances behind those curiosities could not have been more different, and as a result, despite their similarities, Ariel and Marina were also different. Whereas Marina's curiosity was piqued by her sisters being able to go to the surface and them telling her stories of their excursions, and she could not go because she had not come of age, Ariel was also forbidden from going to the surface, but unlike Marina, it was not because she had not become of age; it was because her father, King Triton seemed to possess a deep-seeded hatred for humans and forbade all his daughters from going to the surface, fearing that they could be seen.

Unfortunately for him, this stance only served to have the opposite effect on his youngest daughter, as instead of deterring her, the fact that he forbade her from going to the surface only served to fuel her curiosity, and the more he tried to enforce it, the more curious Ariel became. Fritz may not have seen King Triton before, but from what she heard from Ariel, it was clear that their difference in opinion often caused them to clash.

Anyway, Fritz had never gained the courage to approach Ariel, fearful that in befriending her, he was somehow abandoning and betraying Marina. Of course, he knew that if he explained the situation to Ariel, then it would obviously be inevitable that she would want to meet Marina, and given her father's attitude towards the surface, he did not want to get the Atlantican Princess into trouble, since he still remembered how Marina's father saw him as a bad influence on his daughter, and he also feared what Triton would do to Marina if he found out that she had originally been a mermaid, and so, with that in mind, he kept his distance and just observed.

Anyway, Ariel, herself was a green-tailed mermaid with fiery red long hair and blue eyes and she wore a purple seashell bra, and had an orange bag currently slung over her right shoulder, and she was currently looking down at a shipwreck from the mast of another sunken ship, looking over the horizontal part that normally held the sail up. Looking around, Fritz could safely say that they were in a sunken ship graveyard, since this part of the seabed was littered with sunken wrecks; many of which, Ariel had explored before.

"Brings back memories," he thought to himself, as he remembered how he and Marina used to explore sunken ships in the aftermath of Devillia's storms.

"Ariel, wait for me!" a voice that Fritz recognised as belonging to Ariel's own companion, Flounder called out from behind her.

"Flounder, hurry up," Ariel said with a small glare as she motioned her hand in a "Come here" gesture and Flounder, himself, came swimming towards Ariel, flipping his caudal fin from side to side really quickly as he swam as fast as he could, and was looking rather exhausted as he panted for breath.

"You know I can't swim that fast," he panted, as he came up behind his mermaid friend.

Flounder, himself was yellow in colour with four blue streaks running down his sides from his back down to the middle of his sides. He also had blue fins that were two different shades of blue. His pectoral fins had a light shade of blue at their sides and a darker shade of blue running down the centre as a thick stripe. His caudal find was also light blue with two thinner stripes of dark blue and the same was true for his dorsal fin that ran from the top of his head right down to his caudal fin, getting smaller the closer it came to the caudal fin. At the front of his dorsal fin were three lose strands attached to it, but looked more like strands of human hair than part of his dorsal fin, and he also had green eyes.

"There it is," Ariel said after gasping, as she pointed down to a shipwreck that sat on a small outcrop on the seabed as the sunlight shone partial on its stern, "Isn't it fantastic?"

"Sure, i-it's great," Flounder replied in unenthusiastic agreement, clearly more scared than curious, since he had no idea just what was lurking within the graveyard, and was afraid that they would run into danger, "Now let's get outta here."

He then turned and started to swim off, but Ariel just sighed as she grabbed him by the tail and started to swim towards the shipwreck with Flounder's tail still in her hand.

"You're not getting cold fins now, are you?" she said in a slightly frustrated tone, and Fritz had to admit that this was another difference between Ariel and Marina.

"Who me?" Flounder said, trying to sound braver than he actually was, as Ariel released him once she had gotten closer to the shipwreck, "No way, it's just… it uh…"

He then swam after Ariel as he continued to think of a plausible excuse to explain his unease.

"It looks damp in there," he went on, as an excuse finally came to him, "Yeah, and, yeah, I think I may be coming down with something."

He then placed his pectoral fin on his head as if it were a hand in a stereotypical human thinking stance as he considered how to proceed.

"Yeah, I got this cough," he finally said, as he swam after Ariel, who was looking through a porthole on the side of the ship, and as if to emphasise his point, he gave a rather unconvincing cough.

"Okay, I'm going inside," Ariel said after looking in through the porthole, and then turned to her friend and gave him a rather teasingly, somewhat smug smile, "You can just stay here and watch for sharks."

"Okay," Flounder said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, as Ariel swam inside through the porthole, "Okay, you go, I'll stay…"

However, just then, what Ariel had said suddenly hit him, and a panicked look materialised on his face as he realised that he was terrified of sharks.

"What, sharks!" he said in alarm, as he flipped his caudal fin and tried to enter through the porthole, "Ariel!"

Fritz also shuddered at the prospect of encountering a shark. In the past whenever he and Marina were out playing and exploring, they never had to worry about the possibility of a shark attack, since most sharks tended to stay away from Mediterranean Waters, and those that did not, were usually from the more peaceful and placid species of sharks. However, he had to remind himself that this was Atlantican territory, and as such, the more dangerous species of sharks were much more common and listening to Flounder's panic also set him at unease.

However, unfortunately for Flounder, he was too fat to fit through the porthole and ended up getting stuck.

"Ariel… I can't… I mean…" Flounder said, as struggled to get through, but unfortunately he was unable to make much progress even as he pushed his pectoral fins against the wall as if they were human hands, "Ariel, help!"

Fortunately, Ariel had not gotten far, and upon hearing her friend's cry for help, turned and swam back to the porthole.

"Oh, Flounder," Ariel said with a teasing laugh, as she grabbed his pectoral fins and gently tugged at them.

"Ariel, do you really think there might be sharks around here?" Flounder whispered, as Ariel continued to pull at his pectoral fins, but unbeknownst to either of them or Fritz, who had gone to find another way into the ship, the shadow of a great white shark passed over the porthole as one swam by.

"Flounder, don't be such a guppy," Ariel said teasingly.

"I'm not a guppy," Flounder said, as he gave one almighty push and Ariel managed to pull him in.

* * *

"Don't be so sure, little mermaid," the shark on the outside of the ship said quietly, "You and your little guppy friend will make tasty new additions to the inside of my stomach."

* * *

Once inside, both of them swam down into the cargo hold of the ship.

"This is great," Flounder said, trying to be brave as he slowed down and started to look around, as Ariel swam on ahead of him, "I mean, I… uh… really love this… ha, ha, excitement, adventure, danger lurking around every corn…"

However, he then let out a panicked scream and backed away as he turned and saw that he was right up in the face of a human skeleton, and ploughed right into a support beam that was unfortunately unstable, and Flounder dislodged it, causing part of the ceiling to cave in.

"Ariel!" he screamed, as he quickly swam away from the falling debris, and swam right into Ariel's stomach and she put her arms round him and fell on her back, but quickly recovered as Flounder continued to shiver in terror.

"Oh, are you okay?" Ariel asked in genuine concern, as Flounder continued to shiver, scared of his wits, even as he started to calm down.

Despite constantly teasing him whenever he was acting rather cowardly and fearful, Flounder was still her friend, and as such, she cared for him very much and did not intend to insult him.

"Sure, no problem, I'm okay," he whispered simply in response to her comment, and then, Ariel brought her index finger to her mouth.

"Shush," she said simply before she swam up through the hole that Flounder had unwittingly made, and found herself in one of the ship's cabins.

Flounder followed Ariel, and once she was inside the cabin, she placed her hand on the floor as she came up through the hole and started to look around and her eyes widened in excitement as she eyed a three-pronged dinner fork lying on the floor.

"Oh my gosh," she said in a rather excited tone, as she came up and swam towards it, "Oh my gosh, have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your entire life?"

"Cool," Flounder said excitedly, briefly forgetting about his fear, as he rubbed his pectoral fins together as if they were human hands and Ariel picked up the fork, and he swam over to see it for himself, "But… uh, what is it?"

"I don't know," Ariel said with a laugh, as she placed the fork in her bag, unaware of the shark that just swam by outside, "But I bet Scuttle will."

"What was that?" Flounder said, as he heard something outside and all of a sudden, his fear returned with alarming intensity.

Unfortunately, Ariel was too caught up in her own excitement to notice, and upon noticing something else; she swam over to see what it was.

"Did you hear something?" Flounder said, as he swam closer to the ship's window in order to get a closer look as to what was outside as he suddenly got a really dreadful feeling that they were not alone.

"Hmm, I wonder what this one is," Ariel said, as she picked up a smoking pipe, unaware of her friend's increasing sense of alarm.

"Ariel," Flounder said with alarm clear in his voice, even as the shark rose up from outside the window behind him and opened its mouth.

"Flounder, will you relax?" Ariel said with a hint of frustration in her voice, having had enough of her friend's supposed paranoia, "Nothing's going to happen."

However, even as Ariel was talking, Flounder noticed the shadow behind him and turned, and terror flooded his mind as he noticed the shark's open mouth as it lunged towards him and chomped down, as he quickly swam away as the shark burst through the window.

"AAAHHH, SHARK, SHARK!" he screamed, as terror overwhelmed him as the shark followed him, but banged its head against the ceiling as Flounder swam to the left and right into Ariel, accidentally pushing her up against the wall of the ship "WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"Hi there," the shark said in a sinister tone and a big toothy smile, as it suddenly swam towards Ariel, repeatedly chomping down on its teeth, as Ariel quickly pushed a table aside with her tail and swam out in front of her even as the shark came into the wall and was forced to make a turn.

Upon encountering the wall on the opposite end of the cabin, Ariel veered to the left, causing the shark to slam into it as it could not turn quickly enough to avoid the collision. However, Ariel and Flounder both ignored the shark as they swam up to the next floor of the ship above the cabin. However, they did not get very far when the shark suddenly burst through the floor boards, and Flounder let out another terrified scream.

"Don't worry, little mermaid," the shark said in a tauntingly sweet tone, "I'm not going to hurt you; I'm just going to acquaint you with the inside of my stomach."

The shark then opened his mouth and chomped down as Ariel and Flounder both quickly turned and swam in the opposite direction with the shark chasing them as it munched down on the floor while chasing after them; all the while, Flounder could not stop screaming.

Unfortunately, Ariel was swimming so quickly that her bag got caught on a piece of wood sticking up from the floor and after a brief moment, in which she debated on whether or not she should risk going back for it, she turned and swam back, deciding that she was not going to lose what she had just found and fortunately, she managed to retrieve it and swim away before the shark reached her, though, it was a close call and she escaped through a small hole in the ceiling that was just wide enough for her to fit through.

"Come 'ere!" the shark demanded, as he tried to follow her, but ended up banging his head off the ceiling, but instead of giving up, he gave the ceiling an almighty bang, bursting through it in the pursuit of his prey.

Meanwhile, Ariel had managed to catch up with Flounder, who was swimming towards a set of portholes.

"Oh no!" he said in a panicked tone, as he remembered how much of a struggle it had been to get through, even with Ariel's help, but nonetheless, he swam right up to the middle porthole and got his head caught, but fortunately Ariel quickly managed to push him through before making her own exit.

However, not one to be deterred from catching his prey, the shark burst through the wall of the ship.

"Get back here, you little maggots!" the shark roared with rage, "You're both going into my stomach and that's all there is to it!"

Flounder started to scream again as they swam round one of the ship's mast poles, and unfortunately, they were swimming so fast that Flounder slammed into one of the horizontal masts and started to fall towards the seabed with a dazed look on his face, and fortunately, he managed to avoid the shark as he chomped down and ended up with the mast instead of Flounder in his mouth as he swam round the vertical pole.

However, upon noticing that Flounder was no longer with her, Ariel turned and, dropping her bag, she quickly swam down to where Flounder was descending and caught him as she swam through the ring on the top of an anchor.

However, the shark came charging right at them, and Ariel quickly retreated through the ring, but unfortunately for the shark, by the time it noticed the anchor ring, it was too late.

"CRUD!" he cursed, unable to stop himself as he swam right into it and got his head stuck.

Ariel then picked up her bag and let out a playful laugh before swimming off to the surface.

"You big bully!" Flounder said, feeling braver now that the shark was stuck, and then, he blew the shark a rather rude raspberry.

However, the shark just responded with a chomp of his mouth.

"I swear, you little guppy, both you and your little mermaid friend will regret this!" he roared in a rather vengeful tone, "You both better hope that I never get outta here because if I do, I'll hunt you both down wherever you are and then I'll make you both sorry that you were ever born!"

Flounder, of course, was not listening. After the shark had chomped at him, he screamed and then followed Ariel.

"Flounder, you really are a guppy," Ariel laughed.

"I am not," Flounder protested simply.

* * *

However, from the ship's bow, Fritz emerged, having hidden from the entire scene, and upon realising that it was safe to come out, he came out and swam up after Ariel and Flounder, all the while maintaining his distance as he listened to the trapped shark spew out a list or tirades and cuss words, some of which, he did not know the meaning of.

"Phew, that was a close one," he thought to himself, as he thought back to his situation with Marina.

He had to admit that Ariel and Marina were similar in some regards, but vastly different in others. For example, from what he could tell from Flounder, he was not that courageous, and he got scared rather easily, and more often than not, he often tried to talk Ariel out of her escapades, fearful that something bad may happen to them. The biggest difference between Ariel and Marina was that Ariel tended to tease her friend a lot whenever he brought up his fears, whereas, remembering the only time in which he disagreed with Marina was when she went to see Devillia, Marina just mostly ignored his protests, only regarding him when he threatened to tell King Kraken where she was.

Another difference was when it came to their fathers. From what he heard from Ariel's many conversations with Flounder, Ariel seemed to be a more, "In your face" type of person when it came to her father, and she was not afraid to voice her disagreements with him, whereas, whenever Marina had gotten into trouble with her father, she had just floated there and took it, though, unlike Triton, Kraken had his mother, Marina's grandmother, to keep him in check, whereas Triton had nobody to force him to stay his hand.

Marina's grandmother was very wise and knew how to handle any given situation when it came to disciplining her granddaughters. Fritz knew that Triton could definitely do with some of her advice. After all, Ariel's fascination of the surface world had come about because he had told her to stay away from the surface, and the more he tried to stop her, the more he was unknowingly encouraging her to disobey him, and all his attempts to be strict with her only made controlling her more difficult. Even Fritz could see that, but even if Marina's grandmother had given Triton advice and told him what he was doing wrong, from what Fritz had heard, Triton seemed like a rather prideful man who would not listen to anyone, and it would only take some disaster occurring in order to get him to admit that he was wrong.

Anyway, thinking back to the whole situation with Marina, Fritz had been absolutely and thoroughly devastated at what had happened to his friend. However, he supposed that he had no one to blame but himself, since he had been the one to show Marina that sunken ship that contained the Prince's statue… of course, at the time, he had no idea that it was there, and it had also been his idea to sneak out and go to the surface. It had originally been intended as a quick excursion, but the fireworks from a nearby ship had grabbed their attention and Marina saw the Prince for the first time, and then, Devillia had decided to conjure up a storm, which led to Marina rescuing the Prince and it led to them getting caught.

"Oh, Marina, I wish you'd understand, you're not a heartless monster, you're not," he thought with a sad sigh, as the heartache he felt since then surfaced.

Sure, he could easily see that it was Marina's fault that she was in the situation she was in, since she had agreed to Devillia's deal and thrown all caution to the wind, and probably just assumed that everyone would accept the situation, but Fritz could see that Marina was not as uncaring as she believed herself to have been.

After all, when the Sea-Bottom Police Patrol had found them, he had been taken to be interrogated, and he remembered Marina telling them to leave him alone and that it was her fault, and also, after he saved her from Devillia's mutant polyps and that giant clam, he had decided that if Marina was not going to back down, then he would help her, but Marina refused saying that he had already gone through too much trouble because of her, and it took him throwing a toddler-style temper tantrum before she changed her mind, though, she had told him to keep quiet in case Devillia had been asleep and was fearful that his tantrum would wake her up, and also, when she emerged and he confessed that he did not want her to become a human, she did try to comfort him, and before leaving for the Summer Palace, she looked over the Merman Palace as she bid her family a silent farewell.

Fritz had been there, he had seen Marina's sad expression, and yet, she believed that she had cold-heartedly abandoned them. That was not true, though, when he told Marina's sisters about what had happened the next day, they had not taken the news very well, and had proven Marina's assumptions wrong when they expressed their anger, hurt and betrayal over the issue, unable to believe that their little sister had upped and abandoned them without so much as a word, and some had even said things that they did not mean out of anger, and Fritz found himself speaking in her defence, though, he had to admit that he was very lacking in evidence since Marina had made the decision entirely on her own and her sisters did bring up valid points.

Nonetheless, he still stood by Marina no matter what. He did not know why that was, even if he did agree with Marina in that she had no one to blame but herself, but there was just something about Marina that whenever he tried to be mad at her for whatever reason, he just could not bring himself to get mad, and on the few occasions that he did manage to push past this barrier, his anger did not last long, which was a stark contrast to when they met, and Fritz pretty much remembered how he ranted, raved and badmouthed Marina to tears in anger when she had accidentally bumped into him… well actually, he had also not been paying attention to where he was going either, and they bumped into each other, and Marina did apologise, but Fritz had ignored her and snapped.

Back then he did not like mer-people very much. The majority of mer-folk he had met in the past had all… in his opinion, been rather snobbish and stuck-up, having a low opinion of other sea life and swam around like they owned the ocean, and they seemed to believe that the other life that inhabited the sea basically existed to serve them. He remembered back before he met Marina when a couple of mer-folk rather rudely barged past him without remorse and had not apologised at all, and in fact, they seemed to take offence, despite the fact that they had been the ones who had started it, and yet, the way they regarded him, it was as if the entire incident had been his fault, and that incident had been fresh in his mind when Marina bumped into him, and believing that she was no different, he had lashed out at her, too caught up in his anger to listen to her apology.

However, fortunately King Kraken had a word with his Uncle Duke, a humpback whale, and he had guilt-tripped him into apologising to Marina, and after an awkward first few minutes, they eventually became comfortable round one another and their friendship hit off from there, and Marina had proven to him that not all mer-folk were like what he envisioned, though, King Kraken had come to view him as a bad influence on Marina, and Marina's sisters tolerated him, though, they teased Marina relentlessly about the fact she was friends with him.

"Good times," he thought to himself, as he remembered the day he had shown Marina the ship that contained the Prince's statue when he overheard her sisters teasing her when her grandmother had caught her trying to go up to the surface with them.

He remembered how they teasingly warned her about land animals that would growl at her and naughty human boys that would throw stones at her, which by some coincidence did happen, though not to Marina. The first time he had gathered the courage to swim to the Summer Palace to check up on Marina, he had been confronted with three human boys on the beach, who proceeded to throw stones at him and Marina and the Prince, himself, both came to his aid with Marina checking to see if he was alright and the Prince reprimanding the boys for their behaviour.

Anyway, upon coming near the surface, he pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind.

* * *

Meanwhile up on a small outcrop of rock on the surface, sitting in his makeshift nest that was built on the crow's nest of a ship's mast that was tilted at an angle, Scuttle the Seagull was busy looking through a telescope as he hummed a tune that he heard sailors sing while at sea. However, unfortunately for him, he was way off key. He then leaned back pointing the telescope up at the sky and then placed the telescope on his head as he adjusted its length and then started to shake it with him wing.

"Scuttle!" a voice that Scuttle was familiar with shouted out even as he was doing his strange activity, but then he hesitated for a few seconds and brought the telescope up to his right eye and looked down at the water.

"Wow, mermaid off the port bow!" he shouted, as he saw Ariel and Flounder with Ariel waving at him, and they both appeared to be rather far away, "Ariel, how ya doin', kid?"

However, Ariel and Flounder were both right up at the rock outcrop, and Scuttle was unknowingly looking through the wrong end of the telescope, and Ariel moved her hand up to the telescope and pushed it down, and to Scuttle, all of a sudden, Ariel had somehow covered the distance instantly.

"Wow, what a swim," he said ignorantly, as he put away the telescope.

"Scuttle, look what we found," Ariel said, as she reached beneath the surface and pulled up her bag before dumping it on the rock.

"Yeah, we were in this sunken ship and it was really creepy," Flounder started to say, as he tried to explain their recent ordeal with the shark.

"Human stuff, huh?" Scuttle interrupted, clearly not listening to the little yellow-striped fish, as he lifted an anchor attached to a rope out from his nest, "Let me see."

He then dropped the anchor down on the rock, unaware that the rope was looped round his leg, and so, when the anchor fell, it pulled him down with it, and the rope unwrapped itself from round his leg with a ping. After picking himself himself up, he rushed over to Ariel's bag, unknowingly jumping on top of Flounder's head in the process, causing the fish to glare at him for his ignorance, but Scuttle took no notice as he rummaged through Ariel's bag.

"Look at this," he said, as he took out the dinner fork, holding it between two of the black feathers at the end of his wing with the black feathers acting more like fingers, and he brought the fork up to his eyes as he examined it, "Wow, this is special."

He then rubbed the side of his head with his other wing.

"This is very, very unusual," he went on, as he brought the fork down and stared at Ariel.

"What, what is it?" Ariel said with a mixture of curiosity and excitement.

"It's a dinglehopper," Scuttle explained, though in truth, he really had no idea what it was or what it did due to his stupidity and just made things up as they came to his mind, "Humans use these little babies…"

As he was giving his explanation he bent the fork; the "dinglehopper" between his wings, causing it to spring into the air and he fumbled about as he tried to catch it, but managed to catch it by the handle and hold it so that the prongs were facing upwards.

"To straighten their hair out," he finished, acting as if nothing had happened.

He then brought the fork up to the top of his head and twirling it round, catching some of the feathers on his head and twirled them round the fork like a string of spaghetti.

"See, just a little twirl here and a yank there and voilay," he went on explaining, as he attempted to yank the fork upwards and out from his feathers, and managed to eventually pulled on the fork, which was still twirled round his feathers out along with a few feathers and the rest of his feathers on the top of his head puffed out, making him look absolutely ridiculous, "You have an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over."

He then handed it back to Ariel, who took it in both hands and stared at it in admiration.

"A dinglehopper," she said, as she committed everything Scuttle told her to memory.

* * *

Not far away, Fritz just scoffed in pure frustration and disbelief, unable to believe just how gullible Ariel was when it came to the idiotic seagull's explanations of human things. He knew who Scuttle was, since whenever Ariel found something that interested her, she would often come up here to where Scuttle lived in order to find out how it worked. Fritz had lost count of how many times he had followed Ariel up here. He was far enough away to observe unnoticed, but close enough to hear every word.

"You're wrong, birdbrain, it's a dinner fork," he grumbled in annoyance, as he glared at Scuttle, "Humans use them during their evening meals to stab their food with, since eating with their hands is considered what humans call, unhygienic."

He knew what it really was because, ever since Marina came to live with Eric, he had listened in on Eric's explanations on how various human things worked while he and Marina were down at the shoreline, and he did overhear Eric's explanation about the dinner fork and Eric even showed him what one looked like when he realised that he was eavesdropping in order to show him what he was talking about, and so, Fritz knew exactly was the "dinglehopper" really was because he recognised its design.

However, he was annoyed at Scuttle. The seagull was clearly stupid and was as blind as a bat at times. It confused him to no end how Ariel did not catch onto his fake explanations. Even if she was clueless about human things, surely with Scuttle's stupidity being so blatantly obvious, she would've caught onto his game by now. Scuttle clearly had no idea what he was talking about and only made things up as he went along, and he assigned those various things such ridiculous name because, in Fritz's opinion, Scuttle believed they just sounded cool.

"How you honestly can believe this moron, Princess Ariel, is beyond me," he grumbled, also voicing in his frustration at Ariel's gullibility and how she failed to catch onto the fact that Scuttle's explanations were wrong despite his obvious stupidity.

* * *

Back with Scuttle, Flounder and Ariel, Flounder noticed the smoking pipe that had fallen out of Ariel's bag as Scuttle rummaged through it earlier.

"What about that one?" he asked curiously as he pointed at it with his right pectoral fin.

"Ah," Scuttle, whose "hair" was now back to normal, said as he picked it up and then closely examined it, twirling it round so that the upper opening on the pipe was facing him, "This… I haven't seen in years."

As he spoke, his tone escalated in excitement as he walked towards the rock that the ship mast leaned on.

"This is wonderful," he went on, as he turned back to face his two friends and jumped towards them and then held the pipe up as he presented it back to Ariel, "A banded bulbous snarfblatt."

"Ooh," both Flounder and Ariel said excitedly in unison, as they turned to look at one another briefly before turning their attention back to Scuttle.

"Now, the snarfblatt dates back to prehistoric times, when humans used to sit around and stare at each other all day," Scuttle explained as dipped the pipe in the water, filling it up and then emptied it before sitting up, and then, he brought his face right up into Ariel's and locked eyes with her, "That's very boring."

He then quickly turned his attention back to the pipe as he jumped to his feet.

"So, they invented this snarfblatt to make fine music," he went on, as he held the pipe by one wing and then took it in both wings and then nodded, "Allow me."

* * *

From his vantage point, Fritz only groaned in frustration at listening to Scuttle's explanation, though, he had to admit, remembering back to when he and Marina first explored the ship that contained the Prince's statue, they had found a pipe, though, it was of a different design and Marina had tried blowing through it like it was a musical instrument, and he guessed that it was a flute of some kind, but Marina reckoned that it was broken since no music come out and at the time, he had agreed with her.

However, now he knew what it really had been. It was a smoking pipe some humans used for reasons that still escaped the young dolphin calf's grasp. He honestly had no idea what humans used them for and in his opinion, unless he heard otherwise, he reasoned that there was no reason for them other than it looked cool.

* * *

Back with Ariel, Flounder and Scuttle, Scuttle was about to attempt to "play" the "snarfblatt" when Ariel suddenly realised something she had forgotten. However, Scuttle went ahead and blew into the pipe, but instead of music, all that came out of the pipe was a mixture of muck, gunge and seaweed, causing Scuttle to cough in disgust at the revolting taste.

"Music," Ariel said with a slightly frightened gasp of alarm.

"It's stuck," Scuttle coughed, feeling nauseated and unaware of Ariel's sudden realisation.

"Oh, the concert," Ariel went on as she hurriedly grabbed the fork and put it back in her bag, "Oh my gosh, my father's gonna kill me."

"The concert was today?" Flounder said, equally as alarmed as Ariel was as a look of panic washed over his face.

"Maybe you can make a little planter out of it or somethin'," Scuttle said, still holding the pipe as he was inspecting it to see what was wrong with it.

"I'm sorry," Ariel apologised, as she quickly snatched the pipe from Scuttle's wing and put it back in her bag, "I've gotta go."

She then started to swim away before stopping, and then, she turned back to wave at Scuttle, "Thank you, Scuttle."

"Anytime, sweetie," Scuttle replied, as Ariel dove below the surface, "Anytime."

* * *

Fritz's eyes also widened upon hearing that there was a concert, and all of a sudden, he remembered that it was the one-year anniversary of when the music ban in Atlantica had been lifted. He did not know the full story, but he knew that King Triton's wife, Athena had met with an untimely death eleven years ago, and as a result, Triton had banned music in the kingdom, and this ban remained in place for ten whole years before it had been lifted, though, he did not know how. He guessed that the ban had something to do with Queen Athena's death, but he did not know the details of how or why it was lifted.

Anyway he dove down after Ariel who was now hurryingly swimming off in the direction of Atlantica City. However as he was about to turn and follow her, he noticed two faint yellow glows coming from underneath an undersea ledge.

"What could that be?" he thought curiously, as he slowly and cautiously swam closer, prepared to turn and flee at a moment's notice as he suddenly felt a bad feeling coming up from the depths of his stomach.

As he got closer to the undersea ledge, he noticed two green moray eels; both looking totally identical, and the young dolphin calf immediately figured that they were twins. The only difference was that the eel on the right's right eye was glowing and the eel on the left's left eye was glow and they brought their heads together with their glowing eyes almost touching and the pupils of their glowing eyes suddenly took on the silhouette forms of both Ariel and Flounder, causing Fritz to shudder in fear, as he knew that those two were definitely up to no good, since it was pretty obvious from their posture that they were doing everything they could to stay concealed.

* * *

Meanwhile, in a rather barren area of the seabed, in a cavern, both Ariel and Flounder appeared in a floating globule of grey goo that was suspended above a small round table made up of a rocky outcrop and the circumference was lining with jagged rocks facing upwards at diagonal angles.

"Yes, hurry home, Princess," a sinisterly deep, yet female voice came from inside a giant greyish black conch shell that was mounted near the top of the cavern, "We wouldn't want to miss old daddy's celebration, now would we?"

Despite being alone, the shadowy figure within the conch spoke her thoughts aloud, and her tone was laced with bitter sarcasm as she spoke. Inside the conch along with her was an open shell table attached to a pole that was, in turn, attached to the floor.

"Humph, celebration indeed, ho-ho, bah," the figure said with increasing anger laced in her tone, as she briefly waved her hand dismissively with a single quick, and somewhat forceful jerk, "In my day, we had fantastical feasts, when I lived in the palace."

As she spoke, she reached out a hand to the shell table, which had a group of four shrimps sleeping on it, but upon noticing the hand reaching out for them, three of them jumped back towards the back of the table, but the fourth, obviously had not realised the danger as it continued to sleep, only realising the danger when the figure grasped it in her fingers and brought it up to her mouth.

Realising what was going to happen, the poor shrimp let a series of frantically terrified shrieks that came out sounding more like terrified high-pitched chirps as the other three could only look on helplessly. The figure then threw the shrimp into her mouth and after a few chomps of her teeth, swallowed it in one big gulp.

"And now look at me," the figure went on, as she leaned against the side of the conch's opening, coming into the light with a "woe-is-me" sad expression on her face, "Wasted away to practically nothing."

She then moved her body down the edge of the opening till to she was on her back.

"Banished and exiled and practically starving," the figure went on with increasingly seething fury in her tone, as she rolled on her front and clenched her fists as she glared into the goo globule that functioned much like a crystal ball, "While he and his flimsy fish-folk celebrate."

As she spoke, she got up and slithered out of the giant conch, revealing herself to be a cecaelia, a cousin of mer-folk, only instead of being part fish, they were part octopus and this woman had six tentacles.

"And it's all your fault!" she spat venomously, as she turned and shot a rather passionately hateful glare, filled with pure rage up at a picture of a mermaid that looked almost identical to Ariel, and, without warning, she threw a starfish dart up at it, and the starfish nailed the picture right where the mermaid's heart would be, "Not bad aim, if I do say so, myself."

The cecaelia woman let out a brief smile before her expression turned to one of pure rage as she continued to stare up at the mermaid in the picture, and then, she turned to look at Ariel in the goo globule. Yes, they did look identical and they even had the same colour of seashell bra. However, the mermaid in the picture's tail was a pure aqua blue colour, her eyes were green and her hair was lighter than Ariel's and looked more orange than red, and the mermaid also wore a light purple shell necklace and also had a five-pronged golden crown sitting on her head, only it was a lot smaller than Triton's. However, the mermaid had a kind and caring smile on her face, but someone had drawn over the mermaid's face and drew a rather cruel, boastful and arrogantly smug looking smile over her real smile and it looked as if the mermaid was staring at the cecaelia woman, as if taunting and mocking her for her misfortunate.

"Well, I'll give 'em something to celebrate soon enough," the cecaelia woman said, as she resumed her original train of thought, putting the mermaid to back of her mind for the moment and moved across the room before turning to the goo globule and yelled at it, "Flotsam, Jetsam!"

* * *

Back with the two eels, both jumped in shock at hearing their mistress's voice in their head; not that they were not expecting it, since their mistress often spoke to them through the goo globules that made up her crystal balls, which they provided the images for via their glowing eyes; they were just taken off guard by the mistress's harsh and forceful tone and the eel with the glowing right eye, Jetsam, jumped too high and hit his head off the top of the ledge they were hiding under and used his tail to massage the pain away.

* * *

"I want you to keep an extra close watch on this pretty little daughter of his," the cecaelia woman went on.

* * *

Back with Flotsam and Jetsam, both displayed rather sinister grins as they heard their mistress's instructions, unaware of the observing dolphin, and though Fritz did not hear their mistress's voice, he had decided that he had seen enough and swam away before either of them noticed him.

* * *

"She may be the key to Triton's undoing," the cecaelia woman went on, as she sprouted a rather evilly sinister grin on her face as she brought her tentacles up round her and then turned to regard the picture of the mermaid once again, "Hear that, Athena?"

Her tone then took on mocking sympathy as she spoke.

"Don't you see the irony?" the cecaelia went on, as she continued to mock the mermaid, Athena, "Your youngest daughter, whom is your spitting image, will be the key to taking my revenge for what you did to me. Of course, I could kill her when I have no further use for her, but where's the fun in that?"

She then paused briefly as she clasped her hands in front of her in excited anticipation.

No, I have something better planned for her; something that will make you weep in your grave you conniving backstabbing whore," she went on, as her tone flooded with more and more hate and rage as she spoke and her expression turning to one of spiteful fury, "No one strings Ursula along and stabs her in the back and gets away with it. If I can't make you pay, I'll take it out on those you love; just like your best friend, Hera!"

However, she then took a few deep breathes and calmed herself down, and then, she spoke into the goo globule again.

"Oh, and before I forget, see if you can help out Glut, will you, boys?" she said looking genuinely worried, as she knew of Ariel and Flounder's encounter with the shark earlier, "It seems that his encounter with Triton's girl has left him rather stuck."

* * *

Flotsam and Jetsam both shuddered in terror at their mistress, Ursula's request. Glut was another one of Ursula's minions; a great white shark that had a rather short fuse when it came to his temper, and was easily angered at even the smallest of things. In fact, Ursula was the only one who could calm him down and keep him calm. He was fiercely loyal to her, for which both the moray eel brothers were thankful, since if it had not been for that, they knew that he would have "acquainted them with the inside of his stomach" as he put it, a long time ago.

It was really no surprise that neither eel was too thrilled at the idea of getting Glut out of his predicament, since he clearly hated them and only put up with them due to his loyalty to their mistress, and if both had their way, they would have left Glut to starve to death or drown, but, unfortunately, Ursula wanted him freed and they knew better than to protest against her. Ursula was not the sort of person that tolerated insolence. If she wanted Glut free, then they had to do as she said, but that did not mean that they had to like it. Both were terrified of the shark and feared that he would one day eat them and be done with it regardless where his loyalties lay.

* * *

**Author's Notes** – That took longer than I thought. Another chapter out. One of the main reasons for taking so long is because I was experiencing a minor case of writer's block due to my inability to think up of names for Marina's sisters and I was also debating on whether or not to end the chapter after the confrontation with Glut the Shark or carry on to Ursula's introduction scene and well, the latter won out. I've made some changes, as you can see. Glut the Shark gets a bigger role as another of Ursula's minions and also, Ursula has a backstory that explains exactly how she became evil. My biggest inspiration for giving Glut a bigger role came from Morganna, Ursula's sister from Return to the Sea, who had Cloak and Dagger, which were her versions of Flotsam and Jetsam and so Glut is Ursula's version of Undertow the Tiger Shark (yes and once again, Ursula one-ups her sister by having a stronger shark).


End file.
